RAOUL DEDEREN: Let's bow our heads for a word of prayer, please. Our gracious Father, You have guided this church through difficult times. You have granted us the Spirit that will open doors before us and close others. We ask You, Father, to grant us the same Spirit today, so that we may understand Your Word. In Jesus' name we ask. Amen.
I suppose that by now you are quite confused. You have heard a very honest Christian tell you that after studying the Bible carefully, he has come to the conclusion that this is a very commendable motion to submit to this assembly. And you've just heard another very honest and sincere Christian tell you that after studying the Scriptures, he has come to the opposite view. No wonder you are confused. And I'll tell you why the confusion is there. The confusion is there because there is not a single statement in the Scripture that addresses this issue. That's why the confusion is there.
As you noticed, neither Dr. Damsteegt nor Elder McClure was able to quote a statement in the Scriptures saying that women should not be ordained to the gospel ministry. What has been happening? What has happened is very simple. And I hope that we are open enough to listen to what the Spirit may have to tell us today, and that is that we have been acting on the basis of inferences.
We read certain texts that we regard as truthful, and rightly so, and out of those texts that do not deal with the issue that we are concerned with, we draw conclusions that we think apply to an issue that the Bible is not concerned with. We do that quite often. Seventh-day Adventists do not hold any monopoly on the Bible. There are reasons we are in this confusion. There are differences that exist among us, between and among very sincere Bible students, and I don't think I need to establish that this afternoon. The reason there are such differences is that some among us insist on some very specific passages of the Scriptures, and rightly so. And others among us, not denying those specific passages in the Scriptures, want us also to look at the principles that flow from the development of Scriptures. Let me give you an example. How often it happens, even outside the Seventh-day Adventist Church, that someone will come to us, quote a specific biblical passage, such as "We are not saved by the observance of the law, but we are saved by grace," and then ask us, "Do you believe that? Is that the Word of God, or is it not?" Yes, but there are principles in the Scriptures that help us to understand that statement. Or we meet the person who tells us, "Jesus Christ nailed the law to the cross so therefore we should not be keeping the seventh-day Sabbath." That's fixing it on a specific passage and forgetting the rest of the Scriptures, which we call upon immediately by saying that this text is to be understood in the context and in the overall revelation of Scriptures.
Let me tell you, brothers and sisters, I have been around this question long enough to know, and I'll be able to show it to you if you want to ask me questions afterward, that this is where the main difference is. How can we reconcile the views of those who stick to certain biblical passages (which, by the way, do not exist) and those who look at the overall principles of Scripture to understand those passages that some regard as addressing the issue of ordination to women to ministry? The task that has been entrusted to me is to explain why I do believe, as a student of the Scriptures, that ordination of women to the gospel ministry is not in contradiction to the Scriptures.
The most powerful and consistent argument used against the ordination of women to the gospel ministry is what is called the "order of creation." Proponents go back to Genesis and draw out of the book of Genesis statements that indicate that man existed before woman, that man was created first, and that woman was taken out of man. Therefore man holds a precedence in time (certainly) and also, they say, in leadership. How shall we apply that to ordination?
Then we move to the third chapter of the book of Genesis, when after the Fall God pronounces a judgment. Notice that the judgment falls equally upon the man and the woman, on both of them, but then comes the statement used by those who want to insist upon the headship of man over woman. I read in Genesis 3:16 the well-known statement: "To the woman God said, "'I will greatly multiply your pain in child bearing.- That has to do with the home, not the church. "In pain shall you bring forth children." That is also in the context of the family: "Yet your desire shall be for your husband. He will rule over you." It is a husband/ wife relationship. And I wonder how wise it is to use the husband/wife relationship as a model to impose the same kind of headship to the man/woman relationship in general, whether in society or in the church. That is the principle that I believe happens to be at stake. As we listen to what the book of Genesis tells us, there is no doubt about it.
I would like, however, to mention to you that according to Ellen White, this did not exist at the beginning. She tells us, for instance, in the third volume of the Testimonies to the Church, page 484, "When God created Eve, He designed that she should possess neither inferiority nor superiority to man, but in all things she should be his equal." "In all things ... his equal" means that we cannot speak of an order of creation. We can speak of an order of the Fall, no doubt about that. There were radical changes occurring after the Fall. However, and this is where some among us disagree from what others have to say, 4,000 years after the Fall comes the redemption in Jesus Christ our Lord.
In Galatians 3 the apostle Paul, after telling us that although some have used the law to obtain salvation, everyone should understand that no one is justified before God by the law (for it is through faith that one is righteous), he comes to the conclusion that the distinctions that the Jews drew before the coming of Christ have disappeared, and he comes up with the well-known passage. Maybe the passage is too well known to still have much effect upon us, but I ask God that we reverently listen to what the apostle Paul is saying, for Paul tells us that what Jesus Christ has brought about is a new understanding of human relations. The cross has brought down the wall of separation on a national level, for Paul says, "Neither is there Jew nor Greek." The same thing happens on the social level. There is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
I wonder why my colleagues do not share the view that I am expressing here. Why they do not call our attention to the fact that in this passage Paul is not using for man and woman the same words that he is using in all the other passages we have heard of. He uses two very clear words that speak of male and female. Paul doesn't say there is no husband or wife. Of course Paul continues to believe that within the family, as a result of sin, we still have the distinction between husband and wife, with the husband in a leadership position. And this is what I believe he is doing when in 1 Corinthians 11, under the influence of the understanding of Genesis 3, he tells us indeed that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is her husband. The term is different here. And then he states in 1 Corinthians 11:8, 9, "The man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man." Here Paul is using the terms that are translated in the Scriptures as husband and wife.