Here is a compelling book that one can hardly lay down until one has finished reading it. The author is a professor of preaching and worship at the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary, Berrien Springs, Michigan. His primary purpose is to alert church members to the "issue of biblical authority and interpretation that underlies the question of the role of women in ministry."
In the current debate over the ordination of women among Seventh-day Adventists as well as other Christians both sides recognize that although the Bible considers men and women equally precious in God's sight (Gal. 3:28, 29), it assigns to them distinctive roles. In Ephesians 5, for example, the Bible designates the husband the head of the wife, to be her self-denying protector and priest, even as Christ is the self-denying head and priest of the church. In 1 Timothy 2 and 3 the apostle Paul takes us back to Eden and in full view of Eve's tragic fall states that "in the church" a bishop/ elder is to be "the husband of one wife."
The question, then, is not what the Bible says about women's ordination, for what it says is obvious: a bishop/ elder is (in the Greek) to be "the husband of one wife" (1 Tim. 3:2). The question is what should be done about what the Bible says. One side says that because the Bible is the infallible rev elation of God's loving will, we should "tremble at his word" (Isa. 66:5). The other side says that the Bible represents God's will as adapted to an oppressive ancient culture, and so today we should adapt it to our contemporary "enlightened" culture.
Holmes uses an iceberg to call attention to the danger he sees in reinterpreting the Bible on the basis that it is "culturally conditioned." Just as 90 percent of an iceberg lurks dangerously unseen beneath the surface, so the women's ordination issue is fraught with perilous implications that extend far beyond the issue itself.
The first of the 27 fundamental beliefs of Seventh-day Adventists states that "the Holy Scriptures, Old and New Testaments, are the written Word of God, given by divine inspiration through holy men of God who spoke and wrote as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. . . . The Holy Scriptures are the infallible revelation of His will."
All our other fundamental beliefs are based on this one. They include Creation, the cross, resurrection, redemption, sanctuary, Second Coming, and Sabbath. Let this first fundamental be undermined ever so little, warns Holmes, and all the other doctrines could be easily undermined.
Says Holmes: "The issue we face is far greater than an argument among friends over the role of women in ministry. Francis Schaeffer has said what Adventists should be saying, 'There are hard days ahead of us for ourselves and for our . . . children. And without a strong view of Scripture as a foundation, we will not be ready for the hard days to come.' Unless we allow the Bible to have full authority, 'the next generation of Christians will have nothing on which to stand' " (p. 66).
Ellen G. White voiced a similar burden long before either Schaeffer or Holmes did: "It is one thing to treat the Bible as a book of good moral instruction, to be heeded so far as is consistent with the spirit of the times and our position in the world; it is another thing to regard it as it really is the word of the living God, the word that is our life, the word that is to mold our actions, our words, and our thoughts.
To hold God's Word as anything less than this is to reject it. And this rejection by those who profess to believe it is foremost among the causes of skepticism and infidelity in the youth" (Education, p. 260).
At Camp Mohaven in 1974, when our church first took up women's ordination officially, I was alarmed by the arguments employed to undermine the plain teaching that a bishop/elder is to be "the husband of one wife." I am delighted that Holmes' book strikes this iceberg head-on. The literally hundreds of letters that I have received in recent weeks from people who have read the book convince me that a large number of Seventh-day Adventists long to see their leaders let the Bible mean exactly what it says.
