Woman ordination: using analogia entis as source for decision

Koot van wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD), Visiting Professor, Kyungpook National University, Sangju Campus, South Korea, Conjoint lecturer of Avondale College

Decision is a cognitive process that involves lifestyle attitudes and activities that creates the appeal for a leaning to or away from an external standard like the Bible or ethics of the Bible as source for decision-making. It was said by Hendrik Stoker, the South African Christian Calvinist Philosopher: the way you live determines the way you think and the way you think determines your method and your method will determine your final product. (my own paraphrase of his philosophical jargon).

Analogia entis means that the person makes a decision on the basis of his/her own lifestyle attitudes. The person uses “table-talks” or facebook opinions or twitter-chats or internet blogs as a source to decide whether aspects of the Bible are still valid or not. A person who employs analogia entis in the decision-making process has decided that the Bible can only meant and that today’s humans need to use their own experience to decide their course of life today. The Bible is outdated.

Analogia entis or lifestyle decision-making becomes Rationalism. The Rationalists of the past used reason and logic as their main driving force to work out the mathematics of whether something is right or wrong for today. They will argue that “we are doing a lot of wrong things already so let us do more wrong”. To put it more relevant: “there are a number of things in the Bible that we do not keep any longer so let us add women ordination to the list”.

Wayward children in the faith can have a devastating impact upon a mother or father’s decision-making process. Children who lives secular lives and who are no longer following the corners and borders of the Bible as blueprint for living and also not the Spirit of Prophecy, will rationalize their wrongs as right and reasoning why they no longer are obliged to follow the Bible as blueprint for their lives. The Bible is seen as antique and they live in modern times. They fool themselves that their modern ideas antiquating the Spirit of Prophecy Victorian thinking and also that of the Ancient Levant thinking of the Bible. They separate meant from means and lock the Bible and Spirit of Prophecy in their own times in a dichotomy of shelving the one and bring out experience and reason to sense with arithmetic and logic their own course. At the end of their discussion they add the Spirit and good characteristics of the Spirit and also Jesus and His embrazing love with a mixture of Paul’s tenets that we should not judge each other and the perfect modern Rationalism is born. Rationalism is “Bible-less” decision-making based on one’s lifestyle and reasoning outside and loose from the Bible.

Many scholars in the Adventist church were divorced. The liberal icon G K was divorced and so was the liberal icon R C. Someone who has gone through an experience of divorce has sunk into the mud of Rationalization since from every corner someone is blaming. The person has to justify his/her actions by adding on blame on someone or something else constantly. This mode of operation for months and years can have a devastating effect on the balance and harmony of the person’s cognitive decision-making process. After years of fighting to remain standing, the mode of fighting means a leaning to one side. It means either a slightly more liberal or a slightly more conservative. There is a strong push-drive in either of these positions. When a person is embraced by either of these camps, it can lead to a motivation in the direction of building up a theory of life that becomes the trademark for doing biblical and spirit of prophecy analysis. They are either very dangerous or very helpful, depending on which direction they are leaning. If they are conservative they have laid their analogia entis at the foot of the cross and abide by the external objective standard of the Bible and Spirit of Prophecy. If they are liberal they are placing analogia entis on a pedestal and the Bible and Spirit of Prophecy actually in a wastebasket but since that is unbecoming, they will now and then quote from it just to indicate that they are still religious.

The “I do it my way” Christian is one who will argue that one should not take the Bible too literally. They will use a list of examples to excuse themselves from the Bible as showing that one cannot do what the Bible is asking.

They will emphasize that it is the spirit of the Word that counts not the letter of the Word. It is the same arguments that my Calvinistic relatives used against my parents appeal to follow the Ten Commandments and keep Sabbath.

They will argue that it is maybe biblically true that we should not ordain but that for contemporal practicality, women should be ordained since in China only females can be pastors. We now know that it is not true and that of the 28 Korean registered churches in China, none of them had a female for pastor as a professor of Calvin College in Michigan showed in a co-authored book in 2014.

One example from French Rationalism can be given from the book of John Hurst (1865) when the skeptic Athanase Coquerel advised a young man:

“You live in a progressive age, and why do you not progressive yourself? Your fathers believed the old Confessions, imagined Christ to be divine, and Scriptures inspired. We do not blame them much, for they knew no better. But, if you follow in their footsteps, the world will never give you any credit for originality; your slow chariot will move on in the old rut; you will never accomplish anything; your generation will be in advance of you. Be a man! The field of usefulness, prominence, and honor, opens before you. Think of yourself! The Bible is a book of the past, and you should have more manliness and independence than to be guided by its declarations” (Hurst 1865: 409).

 

Coquerrel also said “It is high time that we renounce the puerile, disrespectful, and contradictory worship of the letter. The letter killeth”.

With China Adventism in mind and their system of state appointed pastors we can learn from Hurst:

“The regular pastors [in France of 1863] when first nominated by the Consistory, are afterwards confirmed by the Government. They cannot be removed except by the action of the state. This is the reason why so many Rationalistic pastors are now in full possession of prominent Protestant pulpits in France. No synod, consistory, or presbytery has power to try them for heresy. In fact, there is no standard of doctrine by which heresy can be tested. There being no General Assembly, with power either to establish new standards of doctrine or to give vitality to the old ones, the pulpits of the Reformed church are open to every form of teaching that may profess to be Christian” (Hurst 1865: 406-407).

 

Rationalists will eventually reveal themselves at the General Conference:

“But its [Rationalism] premise was, ‘We will accept nothing between the two lids of this Book if our Reason cannot fathom it.’ Hence, all truth, every book of the Bible, even the sacraments of the church, came in for their share of discussion and pruning. In this respect Rationalism takes rank as one of the most corrupt tendencies of infidelity which appears anywhere upon the page of ecclesiastical history. But do we find its spirit mild and amiable? Some of the Rationalists were naturally men of admirable temperament, but this was no effect of their faith. The most lamentable feature of this whole system was the ruthless character of its warfare. The professions of love for the Scriptures and the church, which we so often meet with in the writings of the early Rationalistic divines, were soon laid aside. The demon of destruction presided over the storm. And the work of ruin was rapid, by forced marches and through devious paths – in the true military style. When the hour of fight came there was no swerving. Men full of the spirit of a bad cause will sometimes fight as valiantly as others for a good one; but it is then that God determines the victor. The evangelical Christians of Protestant Christianity saw their banner captured by their foes. And it was their foes who gave the first fire; but they will not be so fortunate in the last encounter. ..Some of the Rationalists were John-like in all they did, save when they discussed the holy truths of inspiration. Then they were possessed by the evil spirit. Nowhere can we find a more deplorable example of the disastrous effects of a false creed on the human character. It is an infallible law of our nature that the mind, not less than the body, becomes depraved by an impure diet” (Hurst 1865: 34).

 

If one wants to listen to the Word of God it is well to go to Isaiah 3:12:

“My people, their oppressors are children and women [wenashim] rule [mashelu] over them. O my people your leaders mislead you and confuse the course of your paths.”

 

Dear God

We are to keep to your Word though the heavens fall and follow your Word rather than the vote of the majority as Ellen White in Great Controversy 595 indicates. Keep us faithful Lord and bring understanding among those who are faithless in our remnant. Amen.

 

Source for China:

Joel Carpenter, Kevin R. den Dulk. Christianity in Chinese Public Life: Religion, Society, and the Rule of Law. Palgrave Pivot, 2014

 

Source for Rationalism

John F. Hurst, History of Rationalism (New York: Charles Scribner & CO., 1865).