Just Culture War Theory, the Princess of Wales's Diagnosis & the Wagner Modified Houts Spiritual Gifts Questionnaire
Here’s your weekly roundup of everything I’ve curated or created online, March 24–30, 2024.
Thought-Provoking Content
Waging Culture Wars Justly by Adam Smith in Front Porch Republic:
Justice in the culture war is about choosing tactics that do not destroy a relationship of real or potential equality and friendship, which, if it is or is to become a relation of genuine friendship, does not depend entirely on agreement.
As Princess of Wales Reveals Diagnosis, Doctors Warn of Mysterious Cancer ‘Epidemic’ by Henry Bodkin at Yahoo! News/The Telegraph:
One study that looked at data from Northern Ireland between 1993 and 2019 found the rate of early-onset cancers increased by 20.5 per cent, the equivalent of about 7,000 extra cases a year across the UK.
There is significant confusion among researchers as to what might be causing the trend, although most agree it is unlikely to be down to a single factor. Some scientists believe the cause may be partly genetic.
What Israel Does Matters by Matthew Yglesias in Slow Boring:
Just because there are people who are genuinely after you doesn’t mean that you’re not being paranoid.
The Downer About Uppers by Charles Fain Lehman in The New Atlantis:
The way amphetamine prescription has outpaced ADHD diagnosis suggests that there are more “goods” being pursued than just relieving the suffering of a few. Rather, we see a willingness to prioritize some people's joy in the high over others’ suffering in the crash.
Praying in the Shadow of Gethsemane by John C. Peckham in Christianity Today:
Prayer sometimes makes a difference relative to what avenues are “morally available” to God in keeping with his promises and commitments ....
The Origins of Spiritual Gifts Profiles: Fascinating Research on the How People Think about Spiritual Gifts by Gary L. McIntosh in Church Leaders:
The Wagner Modified Houts Questionnaire was published in 1979, which has become the standard spiritual gifts inventory.
Music
I will stand here with you; do not despise me;
I will not leave you if your heart breaks;
When your head turns pale in the final death blow,
Then I will take you in my arms and in my lap.
And draw us near, and bind us tight
All your children here in their rags of light
In our rags of light, all dressed to kill
And end this night, if it be your will
The angel up on the tombstone
Said He has risen, just as He said
Quickly now, go tell his disciples
That Jesus Christ is no longer dead
Christ is risen from the dead,
by death trampling death,
and to those in the tombs
granting life!
Fragments
On Ellen G. White's View of Women Pastors
I am aware of two places where Ellen G. White addresses women pastors.
In a testimony entitled “The Canvasser a Gospel Worker” (Testimonies, vol. 6), she says,
All who desire an opportunity for true ministry, and who will give themselves unreservedly to God, will find in the canvassing work opportunities to speak upon many things pertaining to the future, immortal life. The experience thus gained will be of the greatest value to those who are fitting themselves for the ministry. It is the accompaniment of the Holy Spirit of God that prepares workers, both men and women, to become pastors to the flock of God.
This testimony is about canvasing as an experience by which young people may fit themselves for “the ministry” because it teaches them how to rely on Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Here are the opening lines of the article: “The intelligent, God-fearing, truth-loving canvasser should be respected; for he occupies a position equal to that of the gospel minister. Many of our young ministers and those who are fitting for the ministry would, if truly converted, do much good by working in the canvassing field.” When she says that young people are fitting themselves for “the ministry” by canvasing, it must be read in the context of the article. In these opening lines, it is clear that “the ministry” to which she refers is the work of “the gospel minister.” That is the sort of pastor that she says young men and women can prepare to be by being a colporteur.
In “The Laborer Is Worthy of His Hire” (1898), Ellen White calls ministers' wives who “teach souls to seek for the new birth in Christ Jesus” “shepherds and guardians of the flock.” Because their labor is “as rich in results as the work of the ordained minister,” she holds that such women are “defrauded” when they are not also paid a minister's salary. Note that “shepherd” is the meaning of the title of pastor, and “the gospel ministry” elsewhere in her writings refers exclusively to the institution and work of ordained ministers. (Yes, I did go and look up every instance of that expression in her writings back in 2015).
In this manuscript, she counsels these women to put their “housework in the hands of a faithful, prudent helper” and their “children in good care” so that they can do the work God has called them to do. She further advises the childless wives of ministers not to adopt children so that they can “consecrate [their] powers to God as a Christian worker.”
There are other statements that speak about remuneration, but these are the two that indicate that Ellen White considered women who do the work that ordained ministers ought to do to be pastors. A theme in her writings is that the central work of ministers is visitation rather than preaching, and she seems to have seen women as especially suited to visitation.
There are women who should labor in the gospel ministry. In many respects they would do more good than the ministers who neglect to visit the flock of God. Husband and wife may unite in this work, and when it is possible, they should. The way is open for consecrated women. But the enemy would be pleased to have women whom God could use to help hundreds, bending up their time and strength on one helpless little mortal, that requires constant care and attention.
Finally, this was not hypothetical for Ellen White. We have the examples of women like Lulu Russell Wightman and Minnie Sype who labored in the gospel ministry as pastors during Ellen White's lifetime and received the appropriate credentials without rebuke from the prophet. She rather spoke on the other side of the issue. While it is clear that her concern was more to do with fair remuneration rather than titles, the way she spoke about such women indicates that she considered them to be pastors doing the work of ordained ministers.
On Walking Where Jesus Walked
My experience of Israel was that you literally cannot have the experience of walking where Jesus walked. The countryside is worn down with thousands of years of use with rocks sticking out all across the ground. The Jordan River is a dry concrete ditch where Jesus was baptized. Jerusalem has been so built over that the places where Jesus walked are underground, like the so-called Via Dolorosa, or otherwise transformed so that they look completely different today, like the temple mount.
Where I actually experienced the presence of Jesus in Israel was in the person of the poor and suffering. My walk through the Children's Memorial of the Holocaust at Yad Vashem and my encounter with Bedouins eking out an existence on the outskirts of Jerusalem—these were my most spiritually moving experiences in Israel. The rest was of historical interest and worth the trip in that regard, but I came away convinced that you cannot make a Christian pilgrimage to Israel without some sacramental and/or ahistorical prior beliefs that I don't share. My interpretive framework is typological and historical, my true tabernacle is in Heaven, and my Promised Land is the New Earth.
On Instrumental vs. Interpretive Reason in Adventist Practice
Let me stipulate that instrumental reason explains how to achieve goals using analogy to timeless principles in linear progression, while interpretive reason explains the value of things such as goals by moving back and forth from parts to wholes (and wholes to parts) in historical time.
For an Adventist, regular sleep times could be explained via instrumental reason using scientific explanations and/or appeals to the teachings of Ellen White on the subject to show that regular sleep times are optimal for good health (and, by extension, our relationship with God) and that, therefore, deviations from this habit are harmful. When this is the only mode explanation we have, it tends toward rigidity.
But, for an Adventist, regular sleep times could also be explained in terms of how that habit fits into a system of healthy habits that is worthwhile because it makes us of better service to others and, ultimately, to God, who gave us our bodies and values our whole person. This makes the habit meaningful in reference to a whole sense of worth derived from God, which then also explains why deviating from that particular habit under certain conditions is worthwhile, say, in order to be of better service to others.
My point is that in the absence of a meaningful interpretation of ritual, I notice that we tend to default to the sorts of instrumental explanations for what we are doing that tend toward rigidity.
I think that instrumentalizing of worship (no pun intended) is a major problem in the Adventist Church. For example, the belief that God has given us what I call a one, true music theory to explain why a certain tradition of music that we are in the habit of using are optimal way to worship is sustained by this sort of instrumental appeal to certain passages in Scripture and Ellen White rather than interpreting those statements in view of a bigger picture.
On Divine Retributive Justice
I did a review of the relevant scientific literature on this question some years back, and in most human societies, retribution for wrongs committed is considered a good thing. So the idea that God ultimately causes the wicked suffer in the afterlife in finite proportion to the suffering they have caused makes intuitive moral sense to most human beings. However, this idea does not make sense to modern liberals whose moral intuitions are shaped by a social reduction of public morality to the pursuit of procedural fairness and egalitarian outcomes.
It's possible that the majority could be wrong and the minority could be right on this point, but the opposite could also be true. But an appreciation for the fact that my modern, liberal moral intuitions on this point are in the minority allowed me to read the Bible 'from the other side' as it were.
In brief, the Bible nowhere condemns the desire for retribution. I does command us to leave it in the hands of the state in this life (Rom 13:4) and God in the next (Rom 12:19). The Bible does not portray the suffering of those experiencing retribution as something to take sadistic pleasure in (e.g. Eze 18:32, 33:11), but it affirms the divine administration of suffering in proportion to suffering caused is a part of God's good and just response to evil (e.g. Rev 18:7).
It seems to me now that my moral intuitions are not the best way of accounting for what the Bible says about retribution. There is less explaining away of what the Bible presents about the topic if we approach it with the view that retribution is generally a good thing. I've had to come to terms with the fact that on this point the Bible was not written to make sense to people like me.
That's okay because I need God to transform my moral intuitions. And as a pastor, I expect that others will be open to this sort of transformation, too. So how can I exempt myself?
Sermonette
Publication
The Torah Abstentions Today in Prespective Digest 29.2 (April 2024)
This is a popularized version of an article that should be out soon in the Journal of the Adventist Theological Society. Shout out to Gary B. Swanson for editing my academic prose and to the Adventist Theological Society the vision of making theology available to the masses.