"THE ROLE OF BIBLICAL HERMENEUTICS IN PRESERVING UNITY IN THE CHURCH" By Raymond F. COttrell March 12, 1996 THE ROlE OF BIBLICAL HERMENEUTICS IN PRESERVING UNITY IN THE CHURCH Raymond F. Cottrell P A R T I In His intercessory prayer just before entering the garden of Gethsemane Jesus prayed that those who follow Him "may all be one ••. so that the world may believe that you have sent me."l Unity is essential to the cred­ ibility of our witness, as a community of faith, to the everlasting gospel. "Unityn was also the official motif of the recent General Conference Session in Utrecht. The basis for unity is our faithfulness, under the aegis of the Holy Spirit, as individuals and corporately as a church, to what we call the Gol­ den Rule: "In everything do to others as you would have them do to you."2 The golden Rule is particularly important for those in positions of power and authority in the church. The gospel requires them to be examples of this principle in all of their relationships to members of the household of faith, whether co 11 ect i ve 1y or as i nd ivi dua 1 s: "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them~ and their great ones are tyrants over them. It wi 11 not be so among you, 11 Jesus instructed His disci p1 es, "but whosoever wishes to be great among you must be your slave."3 The Golden Rule and this servant-leadership principle require that those who are "great" among us--our elected leaders at all levels of leadership; members of church boards, conference, union, and division committees; and delegates to conference, union, and General Conference sessions--"serve" the church and not think of leadership in terms of authority and control, but of service.3 This is especially true of delegates to a General Conference session, who are entrusted with ultimate doctrinal and policy decisions for the world church. Long ago we as Seventh-day Adventists set as our primary objective, pro­ clamation of the everlasting gospel "to every nation and tribe and language and people."4 That objective envisioned a world church. In the beginning there were no Seventh-day Adventists outside of North America; today, the vast majority of our members live somewhere else. Of the 236 countries of the world, the church is currently operating in 208 with 98 percent of its Unity and Hermeneutics -- 2 population. There are only 28 countries with only two percent of its popula­ tion where the church is not represented--and Global Mission proposes to remedy that defect by the year 2000.5 Utrecht 1995 will go down in history as recognizing the fact that we are, now, the world church our forefathers envisioned. The structural admin­ istrative changes voted there recognized and implemented that fact by assign­ ing the eleven world divisions of the church representation at future ses­ sions of the General Conference in proportion to their membership.6 The administration of a world church confronts our leaders with unprece­ dented problems of which none of us have been more than dimly aware. The in­ finite diversity of cultures and levels of education; concepts of leadership roles, the exercize of authority, and the way in which the church should operate--and now the role of women in the church--all confront us with major challenges. Can we continue to function as a united world church? What is unity in a world church, and how can it be maintained? Does unity require uniform­ ity, or can there be unity in diversity? Is it reasonable to expect highly trained and experienced fourth, fifth, and sixth generation Adventists, and first generation members in the developing countries, to agree on church pol­ icy? As Utrecht demonstrated, these structural changes provide for recently baptized converts in the developing countries to outvote members with a life­ time of experience in the church. What does that vote bode for the future? Whose church, and what kind of church, is the future world church to be? The so-called "third world" of developing countries is now in control of the General Conference. By their sheer weight of numbers they are the ones with power and authority. They demonstrated the way in which they propose to exercize that power by their overwhelming vote of 1,481 to 673 not to permit each world division of the church to decide a policy matter such as the ordi­ nation of women on the basis of what it considers best for the church in its part of the world. I am not concerned here with the queStion of ordination, however, important• as that may or may not be, but with the far larger ques- tion of preserving and nurturing unity in the church. and especially with the fact that whose who voted that resounding Nay cited their flawed biblical hermeneutic as their reason for doing so. 7 In that vote, did the delegates from Latin America. East Africa, and other parts of the world abide by the Golden Rule. and exercize their power Unity and Hermeneutics -- 3 and authority as servants of the world church? Immediately prior to the vote, and with the full backing of all of his union presidentsB~ the presi­ dent of the North American Division, ~ade an earnest plea to let each divi­ sion decide matters of church policy and cultural awareness for itself, on the basis of what it considers best for the church and its mission in its part of the world. 9 That vote made obvious that they intend to control the church in North America (and elsewhere) according to their cultural mores and flawed understanding of the Bible. By no stretch of the imagination could it be said that they treated us like they would want us to treat them. That vote did not serve the best interests of the church in North America and some other parts of the world. It was not based on the Golden Rule. Yes, the motif at Utrect was unity~ but the third world majority insist­ ed on uniformity in order to protect its cultural concept of the role of women in society and the church. The Nay-sayers were doubtless very sincere, but they were evidently unaware that their insistence on unformity severely fractured the unity of the world church, and unless that fracture can be re­ paired it will inevitably result in separation and divorce. In cultural and policy matters unity does not require uniformity. As a matter of fact, leg­ islated uniformity fractures unity, whereas respect for diversity preserves true unity. To paraphrase my old friend Alfred, lord Tennyson, The tie that binds too tightly snaps of its own accord.10 That historic vote also escalated awareness of the crucial importance of biblical hermeneutics in the formation of doctrine and church policy, to the unity of the church, to an unprecedented level. Nineteen years ago similar differences on how to understand and interpret the Bible forced the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod into schism.11 Over the past decade these differences have proved increasingly divisive in the Southern Baptist Convention (with fifteen million members the largest Protestant denomination in the United States}, and portend eventual schlsm. Unless We as Seventh-day Adventists resolve this divisive difference in biblical hermeneutics, it has the poten­ tial of making two Adventist churches inevitable--one for open-minded people who base their conclusions on Bible principles, and one for closed-minded people who feel more secure with an immature, literalistic, authoritarian reading of the Bible. For us as Seventh-day Adventists, this hermeneutical issue resolves it­ self into the ultimate question as to whether we~ as a community of faith, Unity and Hermeneutics -- 4 can be mature enough--open enough--to base our reading of the Bible on the weight of Bible evidence, or whether we permit preconceived opinions about the Bible to close our minds to the weight of evidence. We urgently need dialog. If wife and husband are mature and open enough to listen to each other attentively, perceptively, and with mutual respect, in an endeavor to under stand each other 1 s point of view, they will probably find a solution to their differences of opinion in a way both will find acceptable. Without meaningful dialogue, separ~tion and divorce may be inevitable. So it is with social and culturai differences in the church from one part of the world to another and the world divisions of the church in relation to biblical hermen­ eutics. Why Is the Bible Unde~stood in So Many Diffe~ent Ways/ The Bible is the most remarkable literary document of all time. Its concept of life and the existence of all things has influenced the thinking and 1i ves of more peop 1e over a 1anger peri ad of time than any other. It continues to attract the careful study of a broad spectrum of readers, all the way from people who consider it a strictly human product to others who are profoundly committed to it as the inspired Word of God, and from people who are scarcely able to read, to scholars who devote their lives to under­ standing it. No other literary document has attracted such universal attention or been understood in such a variety of ways--as the innumerable subdivisions of Christendom around the world make evident. Why is so important and influen­ tial a piece of literature understood in so many different ways? Is the Bible a sort of Delphic oracle that can mean anything a person wants it to mean? To the contrary, the Bible writers addressed explicit messages to par- ~ ticular people in the context--- of specific historical circumstances.