Prove All Things:
A Response to Women In Ministry

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Prologue

Mercedes H. Dyer, Ph.D.

Prove All Things: A Response to Women In Ministry, as the title of our book suggests, examines the recently published book Women in Ministry and points out its merits as well as its shortcomings. The authors of Women in Ministry claim to have shown that the Bible supports women's serving in the headship roles of elder and pastor and that, therefore, the Seventh-day Adventist church should encourage women to seek these roles and should proceed with the process of ordaining them in these capacities. 

Adventists Affirm, the sponsor and publisher of Prove All Things, does not agree with this claim. In this book, we explain why biblical and historical evidence does not support the ordination of women as elders and pastors, nor does it support their serving in these headship roles.

Where We Agree

The book Women in Ministry (1998), prepared by an Ad Hoc Committee from the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary in Berrien Springs, Michigan, invites dialogue with readers who take issue with its point of view on women's ordination. Its editor recognizes that there are two sides to the question of women's ordination to the gospel ministry and that her authors have presented only one side of the issue, favoring the ordination of women pastors.

We respect the authors of Women in Ministry. They are our friends and coworkers. And we commend them for their invitation to dialogue. They have been gracious to acknowledge that not everyone agrees with them. But there is much that we can indeed agree on.

We agree with the authors of Women in Ministry on most of the hermeneutical stance (though not all of it) that they have cited on their pages three and four. We want to commend them for asserting that they believe in interpreting the Bible by the Bible itself, taking the entire Bible as a unit which does not contradict itself when interpreted rightly.

We share their view that men and women are equal, equally created by God in His image and equally saved by Christ's precious blood (Gen 1:26, 27; Gal 3:28; 1 Pet 1:19).

We commend their desire to see more women in the service of the Lord. All true followers of Christ are to be fruit bearers. One cannot live for self, enjoying the vain pleasures of the world, and at the same time have fellowship with Him who gave His life on the cross to save us from self and sin. The spirit of heaven is the spirit of service.

We share the same belief that both men and women have been called to soul-winning ministry, to utilize their skills and spiritual gifts (Joel 2:28, 29; 1 Cor 12). Indeed, God has appointed a specific place on earth for each one. If we choose to follow Him and to give Him our lives, He will equip us to do His bidding, whether we are men or women. All are to put on the cloak of righteousness and live godly lives of service, be that service great or small. God sees the intents of the heart and knows our motives and desires.

We applaud their concern for women to be paid a fair wage and that women as well as men should have opportunities for service in the church. The Bible is very clear that all of Christ's followers are to minister in one way or another and that "the worker deserves his wages" (1 Tim 5:17, 18; cf. 1 Cor 9:7-12). Ellen G. White used several strong terms to describe the denial of just wages for the labor of women in the cause of God. She called this "making a difference" (discrimination), "selfishly withholding . . . their due," "exaction," "partiality," "selfishness," and "injustice." She said, "the tithe should go to those who labor in word and doctrine, be they men or women" (Evangelism, pp. 491-493, emphasis added).

We agree with our friends, the authors of Women in Ministry, that God has called women to public service in Seventh-day Adventist history as in Bible times (though we challenge their claim that some Adventist women in the days of our pioneers served as regular pastors).

We join our Women in Ministry colleagues in asserting that ordination or the laying on of hands does not confer any special grace or holiness upon the one ordained. The long-standing Adventist position maintains that ordination does not bestow some special magical power of the Holy Spirit; neither does it confer upon the elder or pastor some special character which sets the person apart as a "priest." Correctly understood, ordination is the act of the church in choosing, appointing, and setting apart certain individuals for assigned services through the laying on of hands.

But while agreeing on so much, we differ on some crucial issues.

Points of Contention

The key theological issue that divides us and our friends who wrote for Women in Ministry is this: Since, through an act of dedication ("the laying on of hands"), both men and women can be commissioned to perform certain specific functions on behalf of the church, the disagreement is whether, among the varied ministries of the church, women may legitimately be commissioned through ordination to perform the headship roles of elders or pastors. The issue then is not ordination per se, but ordination to what function. In other words, our disagreement with the authors of Women in Ministry is over whether or not the Bible permits women to be appointed and commissioned as elders or pastors.

In addressing the above issue, those of us opposing the ordination of women as elders and pastors have called attention to the fact that (1) there is no biblical precedent in either the Old or New Testament for women being ordained to serve in the headship roles of priest, apostle, and elder or pastor; (2) some explicit biblical prohibitions seem to militate against the practice (1 Tim 3:2; Titus 1:6; 1 Tim 2:11-15; 1 Cor 14:34, 35); and (3) there is no evidence of the ordination of women in early Adventist history. We have argued that this stems not from mere sociological or cultural factors but rather from God's divine arrangement established at creation--when God created male and female equal but different.

Our Women in Ministry colleagues, however, disagree with this, claiming that there is, after all, precedent in the Bible and early Adventist history for women serving in the headship roles of priest, apostle, and elder or pastor, and that the specific biblical prohibitions noted above, correctly understood, are culturally conditioned to the Bible writers' times. In the Women in Ministry authors' opinion, when God created male and female He made them "fully equal" with "total role-interchangeability." Male headship and female submission, they argue, were introduced not at Creation but after the Fall. While the headship principle may still be valid in the home, it is not valid in the church.

Clearly, on the matter of ordaining women as elders and pastors, we disagree with our friends and colleagues, the authors of Women in Ministry, on how to interpret the biblical and historical data.

To help the reader appreciate the nature and extent of our disagreement, a brief historical review will explain how Women in Ministry came to be written and why we have felt the need to respond.

Historical Review

When requests for permission to ordain women were presented at the General Conference sessions of 1990 (Indianapolis) and 1995 (Utrecht), opponents cited many biblical reasons why our church ought not to ordain women as pastors and elders. On the other hand, those proposing such ordination also argued that the Bible supported their position and that anyone could prove it if they took the time to study. This difference was observed by our church leaders, who do not want our church to take positions that cannot be supported by Scripture.

After the ordination proposal was defeated at Utrecht, the presidents of several North American Unions went to the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary and asked the theologians and scholars there to find that long-promised biblical support. In response, the Seminary set up a committee with no other task than to find the Bible passages which proponents need. Fifteen men and women were selected from among the best scholars and theologians our denomination has to offer. The committee was called the Ad Hoc Committee on Hermeneutics and Ordination.

Before going further, let us pause to look at that name. The name itself goes a long way to explain Women in Ministry. Ad Hoc means "for this one purpose." Hermeneutics comes from a Greek word meaning "interpretation," and in our context it refers to principles for how to interpret the Bible. When we put "Ad Hoc Committee on Hermeneutics and Ordination" into ordinary language we get "Committee Appointed With the One Purpose of Correctly Interpreting the Bible to Discover Whether the Scriptures Will Support Ordaining Women as Elders and Pastors."

But as will become evident in the following pages, the North American Division Union presidents who made the request wanted the Seminary to come out with a book supporting women's ordination. Readers can, therefore, understand why the Ad Hoc Committee that published the book chose not to include views opposed to women's ordination. No wonder the committee's report, published as Women in Ministry, attempts to interpret the Bible to support ordaining women!

Is It Right to Reinterpret the Bible?

It is not wrong to search for ways to interpret a problem text so it will agree with the rest of the Bible. We do this with Jesus' statement to the thief on the cross, "Verily I say unto thee, Today shalt thou be with me in paradise" (Luke 23:43). We find that a translator put the comma in the wrong place. Moving it from before "today" to after "today" dates Christ's conversation to that Friday afternoon rather than saying that the meeting in Paradise occurred then--and the passage agrees with the consistent thrust of Scripture.

No, it is not wrong to find ways to interpret a text so that it agrees with the rest of the Bible. It is quite another matter, however, to try to interpret the Bible so it will agree with what we want the Bible to say. An example of this kind of interpreting Scripture is the habit of Christians for many centuries of interpreting the seventh day of the week as the first, thereby justifying treating Sunday as the Lord's day.

Interpreting Sunday as the Sabbath was wrong. When God decided that the time had come to correct that long-standing mistake, He led our pioneers to find an abundance of clear evidence in Scripture that the seventh day is the Sabbath. The same may be said regarding the condition of man in death, the imminence of the Second Coming, the correct form of baptism, and so many other Adventist doctrines which may be seen as corrections of previously held false interpretation of Scripture. Always there has been clear biblical evidence as well as confirming messages through the ministry of Ellen G. White for the correction.

But now we come to this change in ordination practices, which proponents claim is a belated correction in scriptural interpretation. Women in Ministry makes such claims as these:

• the equality of men and women in Christ means they have identical roles; 
• role distinctions between men and women did not originate at Creation, but after the Fall; 
• the spiritual leadership of men is applicable only in the home, and not necessarily in the church; 
• there was at least one woman priest in the Old Testament; 
• women served as apostles and ministers in the New Testament; 
• 1 Corinthians 11 and 14 and 1 Timothy 2, when correctly understood as culturally conditioned to the New Testament times, do not prohibit women from exercising headship roles as elders or pastors; 
• Ellen G. White called for women's ordination in 1895; 
• women served as pastors in early Seventh-day Adventist history; 
• the 1881 General Conference session voted to ordain women. 

But are the above claims true? Despite their noble intention and motives, it is our contention in Prove All Things that none of these claims are true. In fact, we find there is no solid evidence, either in the Bible or in the writings of Ellen G. White, for what our friends are claiming in Women in Ministry.