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Ordination of Women and the Old Testament
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This idea is widely held, but it lacks Biblical support. No Bible text gives any indication that their monthly seven-day ritual impurity (Leviticus 15:19-24) was the basis for women's exclusion. In fact, men became ritually unclean more frequently than women did: not just once a month, but every time they had a natural or unnatural discharge of semen (Leviticus 15:1-18). Women could have served at the Temple on a rotating basis, like men, according to their ritual status (1 Chronicles 24; Luke 1:5, 9). ... |
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Such a view pits the Bible against itself. There is no reason to assume that a contradiction exists between Genesis 1 and 2. Moses, the author of Genesis, obviously saw the two accounts as complementary, not contradictory, or he would not have put them together. |
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Not necessarily. Such a “contradiction” existed in our Saviour Himself. On the one hand Jesus could say, “I and the Father are One” (John 10:30) and “He who has seen Me has seen the Father" (John 14:9), while on the other hand He could say, “I can do nothing on My Own authority; . . . I seek not My Own will but the will of Him Who sent Me” (John 5:30), and “the Father is greater than I” (John 14:28). ... |
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In the Bible, neither blessings nor curses are arbitrary, but are directly determined by one's relationship to God's law. “Behold, I set before you this day a blessing and a curse: the blessing, if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God, and the curse, if you do not obey the commandments of the Lord your God” (Deuteronomy 11:26-28). The same commands bring a blessing if followed, or a curse if violated. The curse is the law's application to a rebellious heart. Christ takes away the rebellion from the heart, so that we may realize the blessings of obedience. ... |
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These are some indications of God's design for man's leadership role in their relationship: 1) Genesis 2 tells us that God made the woman of the man, to be a helper fit for the man, and that God brought her to the man. This implies no inferiority, but it does establish the structure of their relationship. ... |
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Not in the same way as after. God appointed him head, but before sin there was no disharmony that would have caused conflict. Though Adam was king in Eden, Eve was not his slave but his queen. He held her in the highest regard, and it was spontaneous and natural for her to be in harmony with him and with the will of God as revealed through him. She never conceived of this structure as involving subjection or self-denial, for there was no rebellious “self” to deny. Nor did she think of Adam as “ruling over” her, but as one through whom God had revealed to her her greatest privilege and pleasure, to glorify God through and with her husband, to whom she had been given as a helper. Law and authority remain virtually unrecognized when there is perfect and natural harmony of wills. ... |
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Ellen White says both that Eve was Adam's equal before sin entered and that woman is man's equal today. But in her writings this equality doesn't give man and woman identical roles and neither does it deny the Biblical concept that in some respects woman is to be in subjection to man. |
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In our current situation, we must see what it means to follow the eternal principle of harmony with God-ordained authority. What is the leadership structure that God has given to the church in His Word? The apostle Paul outlines that structure in light of the Creation and Fall narratives of Genesis (1 Corinthians 11:7-12; 14:34; 1 Timothy 2:12-14). He indicates that God has established the leadership of certain qualified men in the church (1 Timothy 3:1-7; Titus 1:5-9). ... |
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The New Testament, like the Old (Joel 2:28), provided for women to serve as prophets and to have visions and dreams. But neither the Old Testament nor the New permitted women to serve as ordained religious leaders of the congregation. |
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