Ordination of Women in Adventism: Short Notes

Koot van wyk (Dlitt et Phil; ThD)

Visiting Professor, Department of Liberal Education, Kyungpook National University, Sangju Campus, South Korea, Conjoint lecturer of Avondale College, Australia

When we analyze the views of Adventists on the Ordination of Women, it does not mean that the views are clinical boxes with no overlaps between them. People may express one view but show some admiration with another view as well although not endorsing it. However, the views will be outlined as follows.

There are currently four views regarding the Ordination of Women in the Adventist church:

1. Women Pastors cannot be ordained

1. The Headship theology assigned to Adam as punishment to Eve was instituted by God after the Fall.

2. In the Israelite temple service no women served as priests or highpriests.

3. The surrounding nations of the Ancient Near East like Egyptians, Sumerians, Babylonians, Kassites, Hittites, Hurrians, Ugaritians, Phoenicians, Aramaeans were mostly known to have had priestesses and highpriestesses in their temples. Baalism or the religion of Astarte would have had a strong temptation for Israelites and Judeans to copy the practices of the surrounding nations. However, the Old Testament does not provide any female name in this category for the true religion of God.

4. 1 Corinthians 14:33b-36 speaking about the silence of women in the church is used as cornerstone for the reason why women should not be ordained.

W~ en pasaiς taiς ekklhsiaiς twn agiwn, 34 ai gunaikeς en taiς ekklhsiaiς sigatwsan, ou gar epitrepetai autaiς lalein. Alla upotassesqwsan, kaqwς kai o nomoς legei. 35 ei de ti maqein qelousin, en oikw/ touς idiouς andraς eperwtatwsan, aiscron gar estin gunaiki lalein en ekklhsia/. 36 h af umwn o logoς tou qeou exhlqen h eiς umaς monouς kathnthsen.

1. Women Pastors should be ordained

1. A difference should be made between what the Bible meant (back then) and what it means (now).

2. The first few chapters of Genesis is part of pre-history and should not be taken seriously since it is etiologial and tries to explain the origin of things in a setting back then. Therefore the Headship theology should be seen as in fashion for those distant cultures and times. The problem with this view is that the surrounding cultures did not operate with a Headship theology. Israel was the only religion that operated with a headship theology. Headship theology cannot be cultural. In the Old Egyptian Period postdating the Flood of Noah in 2583 BCE, females were wesir (official), generals, soldiers, priestesses: highpriest, wab-priest and deathcult priestess. It is not only Egypt. Our modern concept of culture is an informed one for our own times, but scholars and theorists are uninformed with the Ancient Near Eastern cultures.

3. The attitude against women was cultural in the Old and New Testaments but in modern times the attitudes changed. This is not actually correct regarding the Ancient Near Eastern position on women. Studies indicated that women were both well treated and victims of war and labor. Examples are given of women scribes, Hatshepsut the daughter of Thutmosis II who found Moses in the Nile at a very young age and let him be educated in the palace took the throne in 1495 BCE, five years before Moses killed the Egyptian overseers and had to flee. They were goldsmiths, jewelers, scribes, teachers, poets, musicians, singers, dancers, acrobats, gardeners, butchers, laborers, cooks, waitresses, bakers, weavers, vintage farmers, laundry caretakers, cosmetic makers, herd caretakers, shipbuilders, papyri restorers, bird catchers and in Late Egyptian times they were dream interpreters. Even in the Old Testament, women were business ladies. To claim that the ancient cultures dominated the female into subjection is not completely true: “Auch in den Hieroglyphen wird von der selbstverständlichen Gleichberechtigung beider Geschlechter gesprochen, ja sogar von der einzig möglichen Harmonie und Vervollständigung durch die Verbindung zwischen Mann und Frau” [Also in the hieroglyphics it is spoken of a mutual equality of both genders, yes, perhaps of a unified probable harmony and fulfillment through the connection of man and woman]. The point is this that there were no difference between the role of women after the Fall until our times. Cultures treated women well and bad just like they do today. Despite this permissive style existing in surrounding cultures of the Ancient Near East, Israel was the only culture that allowed only males for the temple as priests. The Headship theology was in all probability the cornerstone of this decision.  

   Source: . http://kreudenstein-online.de/Helauluja/inspirationen_zum_thema_frau.htm

4. The paradigm of removal of differentiation of treatment of males and females for salvation and availability to the Word of God was definitely introduced by Jesus and Paul in their ministries. They were revolutionary for their times in their talking and care for the women. It was not that popular in Greek and Roman societies of those days. “Jesus has swept away one of the principle causes of woman’s being pushed to the margin –the mentality that it is her biological destiny and her complete social being, exclusively that she should be wife and mother” (Marco Adinolfi, Il Femminismo della Bibbia [Rome: R. Ambroshini,1981], 119). He said also “In the Logic of the covenant of Yahweh with Israel, there was full recognition of the equality of the women and the man, and the interpersonal relations of the couple complete the affirmation that in perfect parity leads to the total integration of the sexes….the integral promotion of the woman is really owed to Christ who gives a mortal blow to the double morality created by the predominance of the man, which produces for itself a large (broad) ethics and imposes on the woman a rigorous (narrow) ethic” (Adinolfi 1981: 96, 100). This is true for the Greek and Roman society Jesus and Paul lived in. The double gender morality did not exist in every generation before the Greek and Roman times. The promotion of women as equal candidates for salvation by Christ is completely a different matter than the promotion of women for ordination as pastors in our modern times. Jesus did not insist in any of His teachings that a female should be highpriest rather than a male.

5. Although not made an issue together with the ordination of women by Adventists, the ordination of women issue was followed by accepting homosexual ministers as a next issue by other denominations. It is wrong to think that homosexuality is only a modern concept. In the days before the falling of Ur of the Ur III period, before the year 2004 BCE, a special dialect existed called Emesal Sumerian. It was an effimate way of speaking and it was a priest who was a prostitute, spoke in a effimate way, danced, is a musician, drama performer, eunuch (sometimes), homosexual (page 131 based on cuneiform texts RTC 17l BIN 8, 363); known for femininity (page 132); had masculine names (page 132); and spoke like women. They had a mandate of sexual abnormalities (page 132); were cultic transvestites (Manfred Schretter, Emesal-Studien: Sprach-und Literaturgeselschaftliche untersuchungen zur sogenanten Frauensprache des Sumerischen [Innsbruck: Verlag des Instituts für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Innsbruck, 1990]). In the Ur III period (between 2111-2004 BCE) the gala priest had a higher status (page 133); did temple and outside work (page 132); belongs to a slave (page 133); egocentric; self-satisfied; self-over-evaluating (page 133); tendency to ascribe everything to the gods direct intervention (page 133); the last ruler before the end of the Ur III period of the city of Lagash was a gala. They can be judges (page 134) and have a family tradition (page 134). In the Old Babylonian times (after 1950 BCE) this individual was a temple official, had other works, and was a cultic performer (page 135). The famous redactor of the Gilgamesh Epic (an Israelite heavy hand amalgamating Mosaic Genesis thoughts in Babylonian dress in 650 BCE) was a gala priest. Nebuchadnezzar II use to say: “Gula who protects me” and “the lady [referring to the gala priest/priestess] who makes me of good cheer” (page 138). In the days of Cyrus in 535 BCE there was even a clan of them. What is important here is to see that homosexuality and attitudes to homosexuality is as ancient as the Fall and that when the true remnant in the person of Moses described in Genesis of 1460 BCE the Sodomites of the days of Lot in 2132 BCE, that is a few years before the Ur III period described above and evidence of homosexuality tolerated and upheld by the temple of Nippur. Homosexuality is not a modern invention that makes all cultures of the past ignorant and prophets of the Bible outdated to their truthful reaction to this phenomenon in their own days. The task of the remnant in our day is no different than the task for Moses in his day regarding the matter of homosexuality and when this issue is harbored in our days our reaction should be the same as that of the biblical writers.

6. Galatians 3:28 is used as a cornerstone of reasoning, a ratio dicidendi that since Christ came and broke down the separation between slave and freeman, male and female, that both males and females should have the license to be ordained by this action.

Ouk eni \Ioudaioς oude  }Ellhn ouk eni douloς oude eleuqeroς, ouk eni arsen kai qhlu panteς gar umeiς eiς este en Cristw/ Ihsou.

1. Women served as prophets in the Old Testament times and since Ellen White was a prophet, there should be no problem in having females as ordained pastors. Regarding women and the church of the New Testament Adolfini (1981) indicated that Phoebe was a deaconess (page 196); Prisca is named before her husband usually (page 201); Junia may be a man or woman (page 202) and is called apostle. Leona Running (Manuscript dated to 5/4/82) indicated that Chester Beatty papyri is using the word Junia parallel to Julia just as the Vetus Latina, Bohairic Coptic and Ethiopic and also Ambrosiaster, and this is “undoubtedly feminine”. It may be added here that so far such terms are not helpful to solve the problem of the ordination of women as pastors.  

2. Those who are seen as objecting the ordination of women are clinging to “Verbal Inspiration,” a position suggested by James Wibberding (19 October 2013) as “Verbal inspiration is the view that God dictated every word of Scripture, as opposed to the official Adventist view that God inspired human agents with messages that they communicated in their own words (2 Pet. 1:20-21). The belief in verbal inspiration leads to a focus on isolated words and phrases above their intended meaning in context. This interpretive approach has contributed to gender exclusive interpretations of statements in Paul’s letters” (James Wibberding, “A Brief History of Adventist Thought on Women in Leadership (1844-1995) [19 October 2013], footnote 23). Caution should be applied to his simplified view of Verbal Inspiration. Although not every word was dictated for the writer to write down in the Bible, when the Holy Spirit as Editor sanctions what is written down as final product, as acceptable, as a standard, as His Word, it becomes verbally inspired and every word counts as it does in any linguistic analysis. Doctrines are standing or falling on this “pickiness” of words in their syntax and the issue of meaning (semantics) in hermeneutics.

1. Neither women nor male pastors were ever ordained in the New Testament

   This view presented by prof. Edwin de Kock (10/8/2014) is holding the view that it is wrong for pastors to be ordained, whether male or female. The New Testament is only speaking of the ordination of deacons and elders.

2. For the sake of unity of the church be accommodative and add on the unwanted

   This view is represented by a group of retired pastors and professors like William Johnston, Charles Bradford, A. Rodriquez et al who is pleading that for the sake of unity, other scholars and pastors should close the eyes and just vote it in so that no division originates.

women ordination.pdf