Questionable Sources

Since writing the previous blog I have been thinking. I have decided that before getting into Howard Peth’s book directly, it may be useful to set some background to the current controversy among Seventh-day Adventists. Peth quotes from time to time from the work of Roger Oakland and Ray Yungen. While he quotes from many sources and does not express direct dependance on these men, there is much similarity in tone and substance. Their influence on him seems at least as strong if not stronger than the Quaker and Catholic influences on Richard Foster.

I mention Oakland and Yungen because they have placed themselves at the crucial intersection between evangelical and Adventist thinking on spiritual formation. They both appear to be extreme dispensationalists, a perspective on prophecy radically at odds with Adventism at its very core (although they share a similar suspicion of the Papacy). So it is to be wondered why Adventists would take their work as seriously as many in Peth’s camp seem to. It is interesting to me that Peth and his colleagues seem to feel that they can pick and choose from the work of Oakland and Yungen and remain “undefiled.” But if that is the case, why cannot other Adventists take a similar approach to the works of Foster, Willard, Warren and MacLaren? Why is guilt by association somehow valid in the latter case but not in the former? It seems like a process of selective evidence to me. In reality we are learning from others and influenced by many sources. We all have to exercise spiritual discernment in this process and make sure our own selective use of Scripture is not as deeply flawed as those we criticize.

Oakland and Yungen have been studying and reporting on issues of spiritual formation and prayer for a dozen years, naming names and institutions in the evangelical world that they feel have sold out to eastern mysticism. Then in 2007 they came across an Adventist News Network article that mentioned (positively) how spiritual formation (in the sense of developing habits of Bible study and prayer) was getting increased attention at the Andrews Seminary and many local churches. Interpreting the phrase along the lines of their previously formed opinions about spiritual formation, they assumed that Adventists were buying into all the negatives that they had seen elsewhere. They posted material lumping Adventists as part of the whole Christian world that was falling away from God into spiritualistic apostasy.

Sometime after that a few Adventists here and there read Oakland’s work and began sounding the alarm within Adventism. The warnings of John Witcombe and Rick Howard fall into this category and also the book by Howard Peth that I am reviewing. For a full, fair and kind accounting of these developments I strongly suggest everyone get hold of a copy of the article by Dave Thomas (“The Great ‘Spiritual Formation’ Kerfuffle”) in Spectrum, volume 40, issue 1, Winter, 2012, 44-49. He documents in detail the journeys of Oakland and Yungen, their influence upon Adventism, and some of the more recent developments as a result. This is valuable background to the concerns I will address in the blog(s) that follow (don’t know how many yet).

(Additional Note– 12/3/14) As many may be aware, Dave Thomas’s article has been attacked by the same people who are finding fault with Walla Walla University’s approach to spiritual development training right now. I think Walla Walla’s opponents are sincere and seem to be godly people, but Dave Thomas has huge credibility with me as a careful thinker and keen analyst of trends in the church. So while his 2012 article may not prove accurate in every detail, I am confident in its overall helpfulness to the issue.

Three Powerful Points

In the previous blog I set the context for this review of the book The Dangers of Contemplative Prayer, by Howard Peth (Nampa, ID: Pacific Press Publishing Association and Hart Research Center, 2012). In this blog I want to share what I liked about the book and in the following some concerns I have about it. The book describes some dangerous types of prayer and the author’s belief that these forms of prayer are infiltrating the Seventh-day Adventist Church. His desire in this book, then, is to sound the alarm that no one might be deceived.

The book makes three powerful points that were very helpful to me. The central point of the book is summarized in a nutshell in the Author’s Preface (page viii). The key issue in prayer has to do with the purpose of meditation. In the eastern tradition the purpose of meditation is to empty the mind. Through the use of repetitive syllables, words or phrases (a so-called mantra), one banishes stray thoughts, feelings and images until one is at the “center of consciousness.” In the silence at the center one can begin to hear spirit voices that tell you things you have never heard before. You hear the voice of God within. In the biblical tradition, on the other hand, the purpose of meditation is not to empty the mind but to focus the mind on the words of truth from the Scriptures. In other words, the meditation is not directed inward toward a subjective truth but rather outward toward an objective truth. This is an extremely important distinction.

What’s wrong with the eastern approach? What if one replaces the meaningless mantras with Christian prayer words like “Jesus” or “Father?” The danger is that if one empties the mind, one has no control over which spirit voice speaks to that emptied mind. Apart from the safeguard of Scripture, it is possible to be deceived into thinking that satanic influences are truly the voice of God. The spirit world contains both angels and demons, so eastern forms of meditation can connect one with either source. It seems to me that this fundamental point is crucial. But for what it’s worth, I have never heard a Seventh-day Adventist preacher, liberal or conservative, tell people they need to empty their minds. The emphasis is always on ridding oneself of distractions so that the Bible or a devotional reading can be the full focus of one’s attention. That, I think, is a different thing than seeking a total emptying of the mind. While I think Peth could have made this point more effectively in 3-5 pages rather than a hundred, I do think his fundamental point is crucial and it is worth reading the book if one is not clear on this point.

Second, Peth makes a powerful point on page 62 where he says that God has arranged the “rules of the game” in such a way that the devil cannot force anyone to sin. Satan cannot take over a life unless at some level that person consents to it. The danger Peth sees in contemplative prayer is that a person will consent to Satan influencing or taking over his or her life thinking they are opening themselves to God. Without that consent, Satan cannot control a person’s life. But once that consent is given, it can be very difficult to extricate oneself from Satan’s clutches. The key in meditation is to keep the process of meditation under the control of reason and subject to the Scriptures. I couldn’t agree more.

Third, and this point was worth the price of the book in my opinion, Peth has pointed out one of the great misreadings of the Bible, one that I have been guilty of all these years. He points out on pages 27-29 that the phrase “Be still and know that I am God” has been grossly misused in Christian society. Most people think, and so did I before reading this book, that the phrase is all about prayer and our attitude toward God in the inner life. But in context that couldn’t be further from the truth. When you read the context of Psalm 46:10 it is all about a military attack on the fortress of God’s people (Psa 46:1-5). When enemies attack the people of God, He steps in with the mighty power of His word (46:6). The end result is the enemies’ bows are broken, their spears are splintered and their chariots are burned with fire (46:7-9). In the context of a battlefield strewn with the detritus of a defeated army, the phrase spoken to defeated enemies actually means something like, “Shut up and know who you are dealing with!” To use such a phrase in support of a questionable strategy for meditation and prayer veers wide of the exegetical mark.

So in sum, there are reasons to read this book and I am glad I did. While I knew the first two points before reading the book, the third was worth the time I took to read it. Next time, I will begin to share a few cautions about the content of the book.

Spiritual Formation and Contemplative Prayer

Over the last couple of years people have become aware of controversy over things like “spiritual formation,” “contemplative prayer” and “the emerging church.” Voices such as that of the General Conference President (Ted Wilson) have been raised in caution regarding the dangers to be found in these domains. What Wilson probably did not know, at the time he gave this sermon in July of 2010, is how frequently these terms were used at the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary, though not, I suspect, in the ways that he meant by these terms. As one who taught at the Seminary from 1982-2007, I am quite familiar with what was going on there during that time and I found it to be a place that was deeply grounded in Scripture and loyal to the church almost to a fault. So my initial reaction was like that of others. What is so bad about Spiritual Formation? What can be so bad about thoughtful prayer? What other kind of prayer is there? And while the authors promoting the Emerging Church were certainly offering challenging ideas, they had always struck me as rather prophetic in the Old Testament sense, challenging the comfortable ways in which many Christians have adopted western culture and practices without serious biblical critique. So what was going on here? Shouldn’t everyone spend “a thoughtful hour each day contemplating the life of Christ?” (Ellen G. White, Desire of Ages, page 83)

Did the Seminary teach Spiritual Formation while I was there? Yes, depending on what you mean by that term. I remember how in the mid-1980s our practics professors introduced us to the concept and asked all Seminary faculty to team up with local pastors to create “spiritual formation groups” of 10-12 seminary students each who would engage with local churches on weekends and then reflect on their experiences on Monday mornings. I have to confess I was never a huge enthusiast about this development. It sounded like a lot of work outside the areas of my interest and expertise. But I kept my lack of enthusiasm to myself. After all, what could be bad about helping young pastors find a closer walk with God? I certainly didn’t want to speak out against that!

And that is exactly what spiritual formation, in the forms that I encountered it at the Seminary, was all about. It was the process of encouraging young pastors at the Seminary to not simply exercise their minds, but also their hearts, while in school. It was seeking a balance between the intellectual and the spiritual. It was all about teaching young pastors to have a closer walk with God on a day to day basis. This has to be a good thing in principle. If there would be any dangers in such as process, it could be dealt with in the “multitude of counselors” that the group process required. On the whole I thought the process of thinking and worshiping together each week had a positive impact on me and the students I served, as well as a number of different pastors through the years.

The high point of such spiritual training, in my experience, occurred in the 1990s. I taught a first-quarter class called Salvation in which I plumbed the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, discovering the various ways people got right with God and how they also stayed right with God. As students confronted the claims of the biblical text there were many conversions (I would estimate 15-20) each year among pastors! This is not to imply that most pastors are not converted, but that the clarity of the Bible led these students into an entirely new walk with God, one that they themselves experienced as true conversion. I still have pastors contact me about their experience as students in that class and the profound effect it had on them.

What was especially exciting was that the first-quarter’s students were also taking a class in Spiritual Formation at the same time. In this class they explored how study, prayer and witness combines to develop a deeper and deeper relationship with God. Being deeply exposed to the biblical material (in my class) at the same time they were learning how to talk and listen to God at a deeper level provided both a stimulus and a safeguard to their walk with God. So when more recently people started talking negatively about Spiritual Formation and by implication the Seminary, I was puzzled and quite defensive for my former colleagues. Over 25 years I had not detected one trace of spiritualism or demonic danger at the Seminary. Surely people were confused in their use of these terms.

So I was deeply interested when a book arrived on my desk entitled The Dangers of Contemplative Prayer, by Howard Peth. The book was published by Pacific Press and Hart Research Center, both entities that I trusted. It came to me without charge and a letter of endorsement from the president of Adventist-Laymen’s Services and Industries, an entity that encourages Seventh-day Adventist lay people to integrate their faith and their professions, something that I could certainly endorse. The letter suggested that spiritual formation, contemplative prayer and the emerging church could be tools to bring satanic spiritualistic ideas into the church (quoting the prediction of Ellen White, The Great Controversy, page 588). So I took it the book projected these three elements as steps to the great end-time deception I had often written about in my books. So I determined to read the book at my first convenience. What I found there will be reviewed in future blogs.

Stages of Surrender, Part 14

Do the stages of faith and surrender imply some subtle or sophisticated system of righteousness by works? I have never thought so. In a real sense the stages of surrender are simply learning how to exercise faith, trust in God, at each stage of one’s life experience.

A recent re-reading of the book Steps to Christ, by Ellen G. White, confirmed my impression. Steps to Christ is one of the clearest places in all literature (along with C. S. Lewis, Dante and Milton) where the human struggle to understand God is set in the larger context of a cosmic conflict regarding the character of God (the first two or three chapters in particular). Suffering and misapprehension of God’s character are the result of rebellion against God, not any flaw in God’s character or actions. God graciously limits Himself so His creatures can be free to live and to love. That freedom also opens up the possibility of rebellion with all its consequences. Any solution to the problem of sin must include a change of attitude and an exercise of will within human hearts. This change on our part is not the cause of the atonement, but the outcome of it. We are won back to God on account of the revelation of His character in the person of Jesus Christ.

While there is nothing we can do to save ourselves, we are invited to trust in the gracious, loving God that we have come to know in Christ. That trust is not works-righteousness, it is a whole-bodied response to who God is, including our thoughts, our choices, our will and our actions. We see this delicate balance in Scriptures like James 2:14-26 and Matthew 18:21-35.

So I was delighted to see the stages of surrender reflected in other words in Steps to Christ, pages 95-99. The author writes: “There are certain conditions upon which we may expect that God will hear and answer our prayers.” (SC 95) These conditions are described as: 1) Feeling our need of help from God, 2) Turning away from any known sin, 3) The exercise of faith as trusting that God will fulfill what He has promised, 4) Coming to God helpless and dependent, in humble, trusting faith, rather than paying attention to our doubts and fears or trying to solve our problems apart from faith, 5) Having a spirit of love and forgiveness in our hearts, 6) Persevering in prayer, being found in places where prayer tends to happen, 7) Above all, not neglecting secret prayer, and 8) Taking God’s presence with us throughout the day and the life. These eight “conditions” for answered prayer are all found in pages 95-99 of the book Steps to Christ. So in this book Ellen White does not see human effort as necessarily acting in contradiction to a focus on the gracious character of God as manifested in the context of the cosmic conflict.

Hopefully these thoughts will be helpful to those seeking to apply the stages of faith and surrender to their own walk with God.

Stages of Surrender, Part 13

I have been challenged in regard to stages of faith and surrender, and that challenge is worthy of some attention at the close here. It is suggested that the stages of faith and surrender leave God out of the picture and may even imply some sort of sophisticated system of righteousness by works. That thought never occurred to me as I had always seen these stages as stages in relationship with God. Rather than focusing more and more on ourselves, we come to focus more and more on God and His unique purpose for our lives. As we focus on God we become more and more like Him. But since the stages of surrender can be heard in a legalistic way, I thought it would be helpful to reflect on the relationship between the stages of surrender and both a gracious God and the righteousness which can be obtained only by faith. Are these stages of surrender an alternative to faith or do they simply describe practical ways in which we can exercise our faith (which I define as our trust in God)? Can we truly surrender to God if we do not trust in Him?

Let me begin with the first concern. Do the stages of faith and surrender leave God out of the picture or do they actually tell us some important things about God? I am convinced they have a lot to do with God. First of all, the stages of faith and surrender are grounded in a God who is not static, but relates to us in a developmental way. That is why He created the universe and the human race. He is a relational being and desires relationship with other free beings. That is why the concept of a trinity is important. If God were “one” in the isolated sense, love would not be essential to His character, but something He came to exercise only after creation. But if God is not only one but three, it tells us that love is inherent in God’s nature. From eternity God was love in a relationship of three. Creation then became a way to extend God’s love in ever-expanding circles. Relationships are never static, there is always growth and development. The very possibility of relationship within the godhead, therefore, must arise from a God who is not static. Instead, through creation He desires the further growth in experience that expanded relationships provide.

Furthermore, if God is affected by relationship, then the way that human beings respond to God matters to Him. Human beings make a difference, not only in relation to each other, but also in relation to God. The choices we make affect God; our trusting responses please Him, our rebellion brings Him pain. God will never be static in the way He relates to us. Eternity will not be boring. Their will always be new heights to surmount, new challenges to overcome, new delights to sample. A God who relates to His creation in a developmental way is a God we will delight to know and who will find delight in us throughout eternity. So the stages of faith and surrender echo a beautiful picture of God.

A related picture of God that I see in the stages of faith and surrender is of Someone who at the core of His being is self-sacrifice. The stages of faith and surrender take us on a path to becoming more and more like God in our renunciation of pride and our willingness to sacrifice for others. Surrendered husbands will love their wives the way Christ loves the church. The wives of such husbands will glimpse a picture of God in the self-sacrificing love of their husbands. It is the picture of a self-sacrificing God that evokes our trust in Him and motivates us to surrender. It is safe to put God in control of our lives because of who we have come to know Him to be.

Finally, the stages of faith and surrender highlight a God who graciously gives His creatures freedom. We can surrender to God or we can choose not to. While the freedom is a gift from Him, it is very real. In that very gift of freedom we catch a glimpse of a God who loves His creatures so much that He gives up some of His own freedom to act in order that we might be free. While we see the self-sacrificing love of God clearly portrayed in the cross, it was very much there also at creation. Creation itself was an act of self-sacrifice in which God yielded up His own freedom of action so that His creatures could be truly free and free to love.

Maybe it’s just me, but I think the stages of faith and surrender offer up a beautiful picture of God.

Reflections on Annual Council: Fundamental Belief 6

A number of changes in Fundamental number 6 (Creation) have been recommended by the Annual Council. This was in response to the action at the General Conference in 2010 to revise FB6 in light of the Affirmation of Creation document produces at the Science and Creation Conference of 2004 (Glacier View, Colorado). Among the changes is the adjective “recent” in relation to the creation of “the heavens and the earth.” The chronologies of Genesis 5 and 11 were added to the list of Scriptures because they offer the only basis for calculation of ancient biblical dates.

The new statement itself seems to me to support so-called young earth creationism (everything, including the rocks, was created in recent times), which is popular with some protestants outside the SDA Church. This is different from the “young life” position (earth may be billions of years old but life was a fairly recent creation) I generally heard in my years at the Seminary (Andrews University). The chair explained that the statement was intended to leave both options open. In his view, this was done by referencing Exodus 20 in the statement instead of Genesis 1. Exodus 20 does not refer to “in the beginning” but has to do with the creation of this earth only.

This stimulated a vigorous discussion in the Biblical Research Institute Committee (BRICOM). Many members are clearly uncomfortable with the “young earth” position. They note that the Institute for Creation Research (evangelical operation) goes so far as to state a “young universe” position (the entire universe, including galaxies, was created a few thousand years ago). The SDA statement must be worded in such a way that people don’t think it advocates young-earth or young-universe positions.

The chair of the FB committee (Angel Rodriguez) responded that the statement begins with “God created the cosmos,”and no reference to six days or recent history is made. Then the “six days” are brought in and Exodus 20 is quoted. The statement, to Rodriguez, is deliberately ambiguous on the creation of the universe and the physical planet earth. Room is left for theologians to discuss the details.

But some committee members were not satisfied. They noted that Exodus 20 is merely quoting Genesis 1 and that most readers of FB6 are likely to read “heavens” in Exodus 20 as the entire cosmos. Unless the statement is more nuanced, literalistic readers are like to attach the Seminary and other educational institutions simply for teaching what most Adventist creationists have believed for years.

This discussion was most interesting. Even in a group that is firmly committed to SDA beliefs and traditional readings of Scripture and science, there was considerable disagreement on just how FB6 ought to be worded. It was then reported that when the 27 Fundamentals were written up in 1980, not one of the original fundamentals was voted unanimously by the committee. The fundamentals should be understood as a statement of what most Adventists believe, rather than what all believe or should believe.

That raised the question of the purpose of the 28 Fundamental Beliefs. In legal terms, are they prescriptive (indicating what everyone “should” believe) or descriptive (describing what most Adventists believe). The Preamble of the Fundamentals suggests they are descriptive. They are intended as a helpful resource for explaining what Adventists believe and inviting others to consider and embrace those beliefs. But more and more voices are treating the Fundamentals as prescriptive, spelling out exactly what people must believe. It seems to me that this is a dangerous turn, one that the early pioneers of the Church would have vigorously opposed.

The fact that the Fundamental Beliefs of Seventh-day Adventists can be changed suggests that they are not a creed. But it is a strange thing to have changeable fundamentals and then enforce them. That suggests that early pioneers like James White and J. N. Andrews could be disfellowshipped today for not believing everything that is now present in the fundamentals. Are we moving toward a fixed creed that all must subscribe to? Or is it still true, as our pioneers said, that the Bible is our only creed? Do we submit our understanding to the Bible, or to our understanding of the Bible. There is an important difference. If the “biblical view” is not what is contained in the Bible, but is now what we think the Bible says, we have made a significant shift. In a very subtle way tradition begins to supplant Scripture. I hope we don’t go there.

Stages of Surrender, Part 12

As we near the end of this series on the eight stages of surrender, let me offer a quick summary of the various stages. Stage One is where we need to surrender our pride, the idea that “I can do it myself.” We may also need to surrender the tendency to hide our unworthiness (by justifying ourselves rather than confessing the truth about ourselves). In Stage Two we need to surrender either feelings of unworthiness or the comfort zone, both of which hold us back from spiritual progress. If you’re going to grow, you’re going to change. If a plant doesn’t change it will die. People often don’t want to change because they are comfortable where they are. But comfort zones are not conducive to spiritual growth.

The third stage confronts us with the need to surrender having to be right all the time, the need to be certain and to be better than others. Stage Four also calls us to give up the need for certainty, the need for applause, and a tendency toward perfectionism that can plague people in the “success stage” of faith. Stage Five, which comes during the dark night of the soul, calls us to surrender a false sense of purpose. Up until that point we had thought our purpose was solely from God, but we come to realize that it has been riddled with pride and a desire to please others. To the degree that we surrender our own sense of purpose, God can fill us with His.

Stage Six is the call to surrender negative thinking and hidden pride, things that can slow us down on our journey toward a true sense of God’s purpose in our lives. In Stage Five we discover we have not fully rid ourselves of the fear related to what other people are thinking about us. And finally, in Stage Six, we may need to surrender the other-centeredness that causes us to neglect ourselves and those we love.

I’m not here to tell you what you need to surrender today. I don’t even need to tell my wife what to surrender today. I know that she wrestles with things I don’t fully understand. But I believe that somewhere in these eight stages of surrender is God’s call to you. I invite the Holy Spirit to touch your heart with just that area of your life that needs to be surrendered today. And I suspect in most cases surrender is not a one-time action, it may need to be repeated over and over again until it sticks.

Surrender may turn out to be the hardest thing that you have ever done. Why? Because surrender feels like you are losing everything. You are giving up you identity, giving up that which gives you joy, giving up everything that you’re comfortable with and used to. It’s the loss of everything. However, the surrender of everything just happens to be the biblical path to your true self, which you will never discover until you surrender. Your true self appears when you let God grow you there. And that comes close to the meaning of this strange text: “For whoever would save his life will lose it. But whoever loses his life for my sake and the Gospel’s, will save it.” That’s what surrender is all about.

Will continue with my review of Annual Council actions shortly

Reflections on Annual Council: Fundamental Beliefs 1 and 2

It was a historic Annual Council of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. The Fundamental Beliefs were reviewed for the first time since they were put together in 1980. That alone would have made the Council historic. But the review was completely overshadowed by the issue of ordination, and how the church should relate to women in leadership. I was not there, but I just spent a couple of days with the Biblical Research Institute Committee of the General Conference at Andrews University and had a chance to debrief a number of major players in these events. I will share some of what I have come to understand, respecting confidentiality and the fact that I know a lot less than I would like.

First let me reflect on the Fundamental Beliefs (hereafter “FB”) discussion. The “28″ were reviewed over a period of years, taking into account consultations with many groups of leaders around the world and also suggestions that were mailed in to headquarters from leaders and lay people all around the world. Appeals for change focused particularly on two doctrines, the Trinity and Creation. Changes were then proposed in 2013 and circulated further around the world church. The revised set of FBs was then discussed last week and further revisions were made. The current state of the document, including all changes and comments by the committee chair and editor, can be found at http://www.adventistreview.org/assets/public/news/2014-10/FUNDAMENTAL_BELIEFS_STATEMENT-last_version.pdf. As you will see from this document, everything was done in the open, including suggested changes and comments on the process. Please refer to that as I share some brief comments aided by the discussion at BRICOM. Two global changes I won’t comment on further are putting Scripture references in canonical order and the use of inclusive language wherever that would not be painfully awkward.

FB1 is on The Holy Scriptures. The main intent of the wording changes there is to highlight the centrality of the Bible in SDA doctrinal discussions. There has been a tendency through the years to settle discussion by means of quotations from Ellen G. White (a respected founder of the Church who is viewed by most SDAs as having the gift of prophecy) rather than careful Bible study. The new wording of this fundamental highlights the centrality of the Bible in any discussion of doctrine in the Adventist Church. I consider this a very important and helpful re-emphasis.

FB2 is on The Trinity. There is a rising movement in some circles of the Church (particularly conservative circles) to return to a less trinitarian formulation of Adventist belief in the godhead. Since the Church had been fairly settled on the issue for around a hundred years, this caused church leadership considerable concern. The point was well taken that the title of FB2 (“Trinity”) was a word not found in the Bible. So it was argued that the wording should be more biblical and less philosophical (perhaps simply “God”). But the argument was then made that if the Church removed the word “Trinity” from FB2 the anti-trinitarians would declare victory, which would not have been the intent of those framing the language. So in the end little change was made, only to emphasis that “God is love.” What that biblical point (John 3:16; 1John 4:8) may seem obvious, it was missing in the earlier version.

To be continued. . .

The Latest on Women’s Ordination and the Annual Council

I am sitting in the Biblical Research Committee of the General Conference. Just heard a report on the women’s ordination debate and I am now much more satisfied with what took place at the Annual Council of SDAs. It seemed to me at first that the church had simply “punted,” sending the 2015 session the same question they had already settled in 1995. It sounded to me like “deja vu all over again.” I couldn’t see why sensible people would agree to that. But that was because my attention had been focused on the question going to the floor of the General Conference as to whether segments of the church can differ in how they relate to ordination. But that was not all that was voted.

The actual voted document is four pages long. It was affirmed to me today by the chair of TOSC (Theology of Ordination Study Committee) that the voted question should not be read in isolation, but in the context of the whole four pages that were voted, and this is significant. Page four, paragraph one, essentially makes the point I have made in my solution to the problem. The Bible does not address the issue with the kind of clarity needed for the church to settle the matter for everyone in every place on the basis of the Bible alone. Please read the whole document: http://www.adventistreview.org/assets/public/news/2014-10/statement.pdf.

The bottom line of that paragraph is the point I made earlier this morning: The Bible does not either affirm or deny ordination to women. What makes this even more significant is that this statement comes as the unanimous affirmation of the world church’s officers. In other words, the entire leadership of the church wants us to understand that the settled outcome of two years of study by more than 200 people is that neither side has iced its case on the basis of the Bible. That being the case, the way is open to diversity on the matter, wherever mission to diverse situations calls for it.

Doubt the church leaders  were paying attention to my earlier blogs (well, I know that some did), but it feels good to know that the two-year process has been taken seriously. I was wrong to suggest this morning that the church “punted” the issue to next year, I believe they have actually listened carefully to the years of study around the world and felt that the Holy Spirit led them to this unanimous consensus in spite of many differences among them in detail. I look forward to further evidences of the Spirit’s work in the year to come.

What About Headship Theology?

As I understand things, traditionally the opposition to women’s ordination within the Seventh-day Adventist Church came on two grounds, using simple terms. 1) The Bible doesn’t mandate the ordination of women. 2) We never did it that way before. These two arguments were sufficient to carry the day during the decades when the issue was not front row and center. But in recent years it became evident that these two arguments were no longer sufficient. Since Adventists have always been leery of “tradition,” an argument from current and historical practice will only take you so far. And the first argument also has its limits. The Bible doesn’t mandate the use of cars, cell phones, computers, Facebook or the internet. Yet people who take the Bible literally do all of the above in today’s world.

So with the traditional arguments against women’s ordination disintegrating, my old friend Sam Bacchiocchi vowed to take six months off and study the issue of ordination in order to write a book showing that the Bible is against it. Now however you may feel about his methodology (knowing before his study began what the outcome would be), Bacchiocchi was a very determined and capable scholar. If there was a biblical argument out there against women’s ordination, he would find it. And he did. It was called “headship theology” and he found it in the “neo-Calvinist” movement, which starting gaining steam among some evangelicals in the 1970s. Some key names promoting this theology were Wayne Grudem and Bill Gothard (I personally heard Gothard on more than one occasion in the 70s).

Headship theology is based essentially on two NT texts, 1 Corinthians 11 and Ephesians 5. While these texts had been noticed by Adventists and other Protestants before 1970, they were never used to teach what the neo-Calvinists now use them to teach, namely that there was a hierarchy within the Trinity from eternity (Christ in submission to the Father), that Eve was in submission to Adam before the Fall, that Eve’s sin was trying to escape her role in creation, and that Adam’s sin was not exercising his authority over Eve. Some Neo-Calvinists even think slavery was appropriate in light of such Scriptures. While these ideas were attractive to Bacchiocchi as a way to prevent the ordination of women in the Adventist Church, they were not known in Adventism before Bacchiocchi (1987), so their introduction into Adventism does seem to me like a desperate measure that we may one day regret. Can one pick a single apple from a tree that includes other apples like predestination, everlasting burning hell and Sunday sacredness? For a thorough study of how the new headship theology entered the Adventist Church see http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/433232.

A few years ago, before I ever thought of applying headship theology to the issue of women’s ordination in the Adventist Church, I wrote a paper on the NT language related to leadership and authority. I think it has implications for the theory of headship. One can draw implications from a text or two that are contrary to the whole trend of Scripture. Whatever doctrine we teach needs to be based on the whole Bible, not a couple of convenient texts. Here is what I had to say about the Greek word for headship (kephalē), for example:

“The root meaning of kephalē is with reference to a person’s physical head, the part of the body that contains the brain. By extension it is used metaphorically as a reference to the person of high status or superior rank in a hierarchy. In the Hebrew Old Testament, “head” (rosh) is frequently applied to human leaders, such as the patriarch of a family (Exod 6:14, 25), the leader of a tribe (Num 7:2; 2 Chr 52), or simply leaders in general (Exod 18:25; Num 25:4; Judg 11:11). These “heads” in the Old Testament were parts of a hierarchical leadership system (Exod 18:21) in which each “head” played a specific role under or above other heads.
“In the New Testament, kephalē is also used in the basic sense. But in the epistles of Paul, head and body are usually used as metaphors of Christ and the church and occasionally kephalē is applied to the husband’s role in the home (Eph 5:25-27). The church, however, chose not to apply this word to apostles, overseers, elders or deacons, it was applied solely to Jesus Christ. The church is more than an institution, it is a living organism and living organisms can successfully have only one head. Leadership functions in the church, therefore, are substantively different from other kinds of organizations. Kephalē does not point to a hierarchy, so much as a relationship. As “head” Christ is the one who sustains the body and provides for its growth.”

Notice how the New Testament uses headship language in a completely different way than the Old Testament. In the OT there is the language of hierarchy and status, because that is the way the ancient world was. But in light of the cross, the NT introduces a new form of leadership, leading through service and self-sacrifice. Thus Greek words that imply hierarchy and dominance are never used for offices in the church. Neither is headship language so used. Jesus did not come to be served but to serve (Mark 10:45). And if you have seen Jesus, you have seen what God is like (John 14:9). This is the larger context in which texts like 1 Corinthians 11 and Ephesians 5 need to be read.

When you “take the Bible as it reads” without any sense of the ancient setting or the larger biblical context, it is not hard to imagine that 1 Corinthians 11 and Ephesians 5 suggest some sort of hierarchy between men and women. And one could even suggest that such hierarchy is taught in the texts and intended to be an absolute principle for all time. But when you pay attention to the meaning of these texts in the larger ancient and biblical setting, you can see that Paul was using the language of the culture, but pointing people to the cross of Christ as the principle that would, in the end, undermine that culture. While the Bible does not mandate the ordination of women, it is not unbiblical to suggest the abolition of human rankings and distinctions in the service of a greater mission.