Record Live Podcast

Is ordination biblical?
[00:00:00] Hi there, everyone. I'm Jarrod. And I'm Zanita. We are your hosts of Record Live, a podcast where we talk about church, faith, and living well. We believe as followers of Jesus, faith is more than just a set of beliefs. It's a way of life, something we put into practice. Let's go live.
Jarrod Stackelroth: Hello, everyone. We thought we'd do something a bit different for record live there. Is a topic that's been going around the church for a few years, and that is around the concept of ordination. Now we. Did this interview a couple of years ago, we've actually got a series of conversations with Dr. Darrius. from the south Pacific division. He is the field and [00:01:00] ministerial secretary.
Jarrod Stackelroth: He also has a PhD from Andrews university in historical theology. And this is a passionate topic of his. Now this was from before Zanita joined us on record live. So the host, , my co-host for . These episodes is Mary-Ellen Hacko.
Jarrod Stackelroth: And I thought that if our podcast listeners had missed this, it'd be good to share it with them.
Jarrod Stackelroth: And just to revisit some of this material. . So.
Jarrod Stackelroth: Without too much further preamble we'll get into Darrius. Andy, we'd like to know a little bit about his role. And his background, his study. So without further ado, here is our conversation about ordination with Dr. Darrius.
Darius Jankiewicz: Well, let me begin first with my position. I function as a field secretary for the South Pacific Division and ministerial secretary.
Darius Jankiewicz: Field secretary simply [00:02:00] means I'm supposed to be in a field helping people with theological issues. So I, presidents and pastors and If they have a theological issue, I point them to resources, and I just guide them through difficult issues when necessary. , as far as the interest, you ask about this one.
Darius Jankiewicz: In the 90s, I was at Andrews. I did a doctorate in historical theology. And historical theology is history of theology. It's a history of ideas, how they arose, how they came into being and so on. And my particular interest is the difficult word here, ecclesiology. This is doctrine of the church. So that means that I studied the issues related to the church from early Christianity up until present.
Darius Jankiewicz: And the issue of ordination, the issue of authority in the church, the roles in the church and so on became a particular interest already in the 90s. So I've been studying this stuff for about 25 years.
Jarrod Stackelroth: I [00:03:00] guess the idea of ordination is key to ecclesiology or how we do church, because it's to do with roles in the church, and I guess, , with the historical,, Look that you've taken.
Jarrod Stackelroth: You've,, trace some of those roles through the history of the church, right back from the early church, right through, I assume, right through, , to the present day. And so it's really, , we're grateful to have you on to talk about, , some of these things because you can bring that,, historical perspective and you can trace through some of those threads.
Jarrod Stackelroth: Has it changed . That's a broad question that we're going to look at today. , ordination, what it is, how it works, , where it's come from,, into the Adventist church. But first of all, maybe we should just define some of these terms. So what is ordination and where did it come from?
Darius Jankiewicz: Well, ordination has a very long history. But let me add that it does not have a biblical history. It's actually a pagan [00:04:00] history. Very often within Christian circles, when we think ordination, we immediately think laying on of hands in the church for pastors and so on. It was not quite like that.
Darius Jankiewicz: Ordination was joined with laying on of hands in the church by the end of the second century. Originally, in the scripture, we only have laying on of hands. We do not have ordination. Ordination is not a biblical word. It actually comes from paganism, from pagan Rome. And what ordination originally meant, it's a Latin word, ordinatio.
Darius Jankiewicz: What originally meant is elevation to a higher status. So if emperor wanted to elevate somebody to a higher position to, , promote somebody, they would ordain somebody. Okay, and that term later entered Christian, unfortunately, really unfortunately, entered Christian vocabulary. So, that's the first thing that it comes not from Christianity.
Jarrod Stackelroth: That's really interesting to have the background of the word meaning to raise up and yeah, [00:05:00] promote. It's a promotion. So in. some senses, we all get ordained every time we get a promotion at work.
Darius Jankiewicz: That's correct. ,, if you were in ancient Rome, , well, it's specifically related to imperial appointments.
Darius Jankiewicz: When emperor wanted to appoint somebody to some position or elevate somebody in the army, they would ordain them.
Jarrod Stackelroth: Right.
Darius Jankiewicz: So perhaps our
Jarrod Stackelroth: public servants and our army officers would be ordained. That's correct.
Darius Jankiewicz: That's the origin of the word. It does not come from the Bible. So later on as I mentioned in the Bible, we'll have laying on of hands, and laying on of hands was not a.
Darius Jankiewicz: not viewed as a promotion of any sort. It was a separating somebody to a specific function. So Paul and Barnabas, the hands were laid on them so that they could be missionaries. So they go and do their missionary work in Acts 13 and then in Acts 15 they are reordained, so to speak, or hands are [00:06:00] laid on them again.
Darius Jankiewicz: The same wording is used there when Paul joins with Salus to another trip, missionary trip that they had. So it was Separating people to do certain function in the church, but ordination was elevating people to a higher position and when the apostles died in the, at the end of our, some of them died at the end of the first century, the church became more like Rome And look at Roman ways of doing things.
Darius Jankiewicz: And by middle of the second century, by the end of the second century, we have church emulating the Roman Empire structures. So the people were ordaining people within the Roman Empire and a thinker by the name Tertullian decided, Oh, we ordain, we elevate people here too in church. So let's use the term ordinatio in order to elevate people to higher spiritual position.
Darius Jankiewicz: And this is how. the term actually entered Christian vocabulary. So it's not in the Bible.
Maryellen Hacko: That is really [00:07:00] fascinating, Darius, because I mean, I think a lot of Christians have probably never even considered anything different to the model that is the pastor and the members. You know, that's just the traditional model that we have.
Maryellen Hacko: The pastor is the one that's responsible for the church, does the visitations, does the sermons on Sabbath of the organization, et cetera.
Darius Jankiewicz: Traditional, traditional is the key.
Maryellen Hacko: Yes, but it seems like you're saying that even that concept of, separating someone and putting them into a higher position isn't biblical.
Maryellen Hacko: Do you want to just explain that a little bit further, this laity , priest and laity divide, sorry, , and where that comes from , and whether we, whether that's the ideal that God intended for the church.
Darius Jankiewicz: Yes, certainly. You're talking about the distinction between laity and clergy.
Darius Jankiewicz: This is another unbiblical distinction. We do not find it in the Bible. We may talk a little bit more about what do we find in the Bible, okay? We will, we'll come back to this, but you wanted to know where this distinction come from. So Bible [00:08:00] does not have it, but As we're experiencing the second century, this is after the apostles, the bishops and the pastors in the church are constantly being elevated to higher positions than the rest of the, , believers.
Darius Jankiewicz: And eventually by the end of the second century, once again, the thinker by the name Tertullian introduces into Christianity two terms , that were a watershed. , and in my opinion, they damaged Christianity for the rest of Christian history. The term laicos in Latin and clericos. So laicos comes from Laos.
Darius Jankiewicz: , that means Just regular people in the church and clericals means the people who are elevated to a special position. And he's the first one to make distinction between a kind of a positional distinction between pastors or priests by that stage. By this stage pastors were referred to as priests and the regular church members.
Darius Jankiewicz: So of course becoming a priest or becoming a bishop was elevation. [00:09:00] And the word ordinatio in very well with that concept. But once again, it's not a biblical picture at all.
Jarrod Stackelroth: , so I think we should touch on the Bible and in your study of ecclesiology you'll have some insights for us in this, what the ideal is, and perhaps in that you can explain the mechanics of the laying on of hands, because some people would argue that When someone's ordained, everyone gets around in a circle.
Jarrod Stackelroth: Sometimes when people are baptized there's things, and , we put our hands on their shoulders or , the other ordained people in the group do, and they pray for that person. But in the Bible, in those positions, that word, , laid on the hands. What was that purpose? Was it a giving of the Holy Spirit?
Jarrod Stackelroth: Because there's this concept that in some ways you can't get the Holy Spirit until you've had it passed on or laid on of hands. The [00:10:00] Catholic Church particularly has this idea of authority passed down from Peter. As I understand. And so
Darius Jankiewicz: all right, that's a Catholic church
Jarrod Stackelroth: to do that. Physically, you're laying the hands and then you're officially like ordained.
Jarrod Stackelroth: You're officially passed on. You're officially in the lineage. , you're saying that some of this has come, it's baggage, it's excess baggage that we've taken through. So what's the ideal and what was it intended to mean, this laying on of hands in your study?
Darius Jankiewicz: What you touched on is a huge topic. We could spend a good few hours actually discovering the ideas that you just touched on.
Darius Jankiewicz: The majority of what you just said is traditional, not biblical. So the question is, what do we find in the Bible? In the Bible, especially in the New Testament, the Church is described by specific terms. And so that we can understand what the Church is. And one of the most foundational terms [00:11:00] that Paul uses to describe the Church is the Body of Christ.
Darius Jankiewicz: And when you use the term Body of Christ, you immediately think spiritual gifts. So within the body of Christ, as Paul explains in 1 Corinthians, within the body of Christ, we have different gifts. Everybody has a different gift, and we all function together to build the body of Christ, which is us, human beings, using our different gifts.
Darius Jankiewicz: So There are a variety of gifts, and I can take you to Romans 12. There is a description of different gifts in the church. There's a gift of teaching, this is Romans chapter 12, verses 6 to 8. Different gifts, gifts of teaching, gifts of mercy, gifts of giving, gifts of leadership, gifts of praying, gifts of prophecy, and all those gifts are equal in the church.
Darius Jankiewicz: They're all equal. That means that we all have a function. There's no distinction between pastors and there are different gifts and whatever. There are people who build the [00:12:00] church. Similarly, we have a similar situation, Ephesians chapter 4, where Paul lists the gifts of teaching, administration, pastoring, and so on.
Darius Jankiewicz: Those are all equal. We all have different gifts, he says, over there. And those gifts are used to build a church, build each other, equip the church and fulfill the mission of God. So we do not have a distinction between pastors or leaders and the church, we're all doing the same thing. Now, that distinction came later in Christ.
Darius Jankiewicz: Christian history, where specifically bishops and pastors, priests were elevated spiritually above the other people. And then people need to ordain those people, so they will enter into an order. Ordain means enter into an order, specific kind of order. To this day, the Catholic Church talks about orders, different orders.
Darius Jankiewicz: You have Dominican, Franciscan, and so on. You enter an order through the process of ordinatio. So, so this is traditional kind of [00:13:00] thinking, but as you pointed rightly in the Bible, in the New Testament and in the Bible, we have laying on of hands. So what does laying on of hands means? So this laying of hands is used in the Bible in variety of circumstances, as you pointed out, New Testament for healing after baptism.
Darius Jankiewicz: And also blessing, you know, blessing people. Jesus blesses people by laying hands. He blesses children by laying his hands on them. And this is the probably the closest understanding of what laying on of hands is. It is a blessing. And I've got a proof for this in Acts chapter 14 and it's verse 26.
Darius Jankiewicz: So, Acts 14, 26 reports on what happened in Acts 13, verses 1 to 3. In Acts 13, verses 1 to 3, we've got the tall church laying hands on Paul and Barnabas. Okay, they're going for a missionary trip, and everybody is [00:14:00] laying hands on them. So what happened with this laying on of hands? And Acts chapter 14 verse 26 actually explains.
Darius Jankiewicz: This is the only verse in the scripture that provides us with theology of God. Quote unquote ordination. I don't even like to use that term anymore. Theology of laying on of hands. And this is what it says in verse 26 of chapter 14. From Atalia they sailed back to Antioch where they had been committed to the grace of God for the work they had now completed.
Darius Jankiewicz: So you see what happens? They had been committed To the grace of God. How did that happen? Through the laying on of hands. When the church laid hands on Paul and Barnabas, they essentially blessed them. It was already the Holy Spirit who called them. Remember? The Holy Spirit said to the church, I chose those people.
Darius Jankiewicz: You bless them. Okay? And that's exactly what happened. They were committed to the grace of God for the mission that they now fulfilled. They completed. So, the laying on of hands was done for a specific purpose. [00:15:00] Purpose, you go and fulfill the missionary purpose and come back and tell us about it. And then we'll recommit you again.
Darius Jankiewicz: And this recommitment happens again in chapter chapter 15, verse 40, when Paul goes on again on a trip with Silas, the Silas this time, and he's once again committed to the grace of the Lord, the same words as in chapter 14, 26. So this kind of, we could say this is a second laying on of hands, second ordination right there for Paul.
Darius Jankiewicz: So it's not once for all. once again to a different task. So it's a blessing.
Maryellen Hacko: It's a blessing. Yeah. So every
Jarrod Stackelroth: time a pastor goes to a new church, we should lay hands on them again and reordain in that, in that context. Yeah.
Darius Jankiewicz: So as I give you an example, so I started my ministry as a local church and and I studied for my doctorate and so on.
Darius Jankiewicz: And I came back to local church ministry again in Tasmania in 2001. [00:16:00] And it is there when I was Ordained to the gospel ministry. But in 2004, I became a missionary, so I went for left for Fiji. I became a teacher at Futon College, and technically speaking, I should be re ordained or hands should be laid on me.
Darius Jankiewicz: And then I came to Andrews University where I taught at the seminary there. Once again, I became an academic, and I should have been set apart to do academic job. And as a matter of fact, when I was presenting in the Lake Union, which is surrounding Andrews University, the union that I was teaching on this issue, I told them I should be set apart to do my academic work.
Darius Jankiewicz: All the pastors, all the presidents surrounded me afterwards and laid their hands on me for my academic work. I even got a certificate, you can see it behind. It's a certificate for an ordination to teaching ministry. So you see, Christian church in the second and third century limited laying on of hands only to [00:17:00] ministry.
Darius Jankiewicz: And this was unbiblical because laying on of hands is simply blessing people. So we should be blessing personal ministry people. We should be blessing the teachers by laying on of hands to teach our children. You know, the Adventist schools, we should lay hands on them. Basically, bless people who are equipping and teaching and working in the ministry for others.
Maryellen Hacko: Wow. That's a really, really challenging and beautiful concept as well. It sort of makes available The Holy Spirit and I guess leadership to anyone, not just the past, which is super empowering. And I guess for everyone who's watching and who's maybe just joined , our conversation today is more focused on ordination generally as a concept.
Maryellen Hacko: And the next week Darius will be joining us again to talk more specifically about women's ordination. However, we will still touch on it in this conversation as well, but it's just good to get some context for everyone who's watching. But yeah, just from what you're saying, Darius, it seems to me that that there's almost a little bit of a [00:18:00] disconnect here because Laying on of hands is a biblical thing and that is I guess it's associated with leadership.
Maryellen Hacko: I see Paul and Barnabas as leaders and I see they're called to a missionary. Okay. Missionaries. Yeah. They're called to a special purpose. Is ordination, take away the terms we're using here. Laying on of hands ordination is like a pastor. Is there a role like biblical like the actual function of a pastor, the leadership of a pastor?
Maryellen Hacko: If we just took away the title ordination and lay hands on pastor, is that still a biblical concept or is that model
Darius Jankiewicz: still? Yes, yes. A pastor simply means a shepherd in Greek. Okay, it's a shepherd and it's a function. It's a spiritual gift Some people would like to make it a office, you know that this is a specific office and early in christian history It was made a an office, and that's the whole problems began when?
Darius Jankiewicz: Pastor's role became an office, but in chapter four of the episode two [00:19:00] Ephesians and verse seven Just let's listen to this but to each one of us grace has been given as christ apportioned this So to each one of us grace the grace that there's a greek word for the gift of the spirit. Okay This is a special word.
Darius Jankiewicz: That means each one of us in the church received a gift. You, Gerard, have a gift of publishing, of working with written word, of putting together nice record for us every couple of weeks. And so you, Marilyn, have a gift of writing and presenting, and and I have different gifts and we all contribute into the gifting.
Darius Jankiewicz: There are some people who are called to a particular gifting ministry. So later on in verse 14, Oh, sorry, verse 11. It says it was he who gave some to be apostles, this is a gift as well, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, some to be pastors, and some to be teachers. So all of those things are functions within the church.
Darius Jankiewicz: There's more functions in the church. Paul [00:20:00] specifically lists leadership functions right here, and the word pastor is right there. Okay, this is nice, beautiful Greek word for a pastor that we can certainly use. There's not a problem for us to use that word today. But in some respect, when we teach others, When we provide biblical instruction and when we surround people with God's grace and love, we are all pastors.
Darius Jankiewicz: We are all exercising pastoral gifts, God calls us all of us to be pastors, evangelists and teachers in some way. Within our own spheres.
Jarrod Stackelroth: Darius. If that's the case, if what you're saying is true, then what issues arise from the church, like the practice of church, if we have a misconception of ordination, if we have a church laity divide, how does that impact ecclesiology, the practice and the doing of church, our theology around church?
Darius Jankiewicz: It is a [00:21:00] huge impact, a phenomenal impact. The impact is of such magnitude that we needed a reformation of the 16th century to to turn it around. As a matter of fact, the entire reformation of the 16th century was directed against that very idea. We often thing. It was about righteousness by faith and so on.
Darius Jankiewicz: Yes, it was. But for the Catholic Church, righteousness is offered by the priest, is distributed by the priest. Okay, so we've got this distinction here that is coming to the church by the end of second century, beginning of the third century, that divides the church into two groups of people. So there is a in Catholic terms they like to say this, there's a teaching church and there's a taught church.
Darius Jankiewicz: There's a sanctifying church. There's a sanctified church. There's a governed church and there's a governing church. So the people who are governed. And they're governed. There are those who sanctify. Bishops are sanctifying. Those who are being sanctified. There are [00:22:00] teachers and those who are being taught so.
Darius Jankiewicz: So God speaks through the work of the bishops in Catholic church. Okay, so in a way, salvation is in the hand of clergy. It is clergy that dispenses the salvation and gives it to people. So we get to God through mediation of priestly mediation of the Catholic priests in Catholic Church. That's what, that's when it began in the second and third century.
Darius Jankiewicz: And we still have this today. And it is exactly this point that Reformation reacted against. That we can have direct access to God. We don't need a mediation through some caste of pastors or elders. We can get to God ourselves. That's what Reformation was all about. We do not need a mediator. By thinking of pastors in terms of clergy and laity, we're actually reintroducing the traditional distinction between [00:23:00] within the whole group of people of God, that distinction that should not exist, because we all have gifts and pastors gifts.
Darius Jankiewicz: Evangelist gifts, administrator's gifts, is no different in the eyes of God, in the eyes of the biblical writers, as the gift of the Sabbath school teacher, or a gift of a kindergarten teacher who is teaching Sabbath school to children, it's all on the same level. In the history of Christianity, we make it hierarchical.
Darius Jankiewicz: And it's totally unbiblical. And it has a huge repercussions for the way we think of church and how the church works. How the church operates. And it actually stifles the spirit because we quench the spirit, we could say. Because we say to some people, no you don't, you can't do this. You are not God, so we as a church can only recognize the gifts of the Spirit in other people, we cannot quench them.
Maryellen Hacko: I guess that really aligns with what Paul says about, there [00:24:00] is no Jew or Gentile, slave or free, we're all one in Christ Jesus. It's just, yeah, so fascinating that I guess as human beings, it's just sinful nature to want to introduce hierarchies and introduce like a structure through which we can climb.
Maryellen Hacko: It's almost like Babel in a way, the church hierarchy or something. to risk being a bit too forward there, but yeah, yeah, the people have come today for the discussion on women's ordination. And this is all super interesting and very important. But I guess actually, maybe before we get into that why did the Adventist church adopt this model?
Maryellen Hacko: Like, I'm curious to know if Ellen White or the early Adventist pioneers had anything to say about ordination, but also women's ordination, considering that Ellen White herself was a woman to take a bit of a different turn here. But yeah, do you have any insight there?
Darius Jankiewicz: We're going to talk a little bit more about this issue next week, correct?
Darius Jankiewicz: Correct? Yes. Necessarily. , you're asking about the model. Okay. When our pioneers were [00:25:00] thinking about, they were not thinking about church. They were not thinking about structure at the beginning because they were not interested in any kind of structure in the church. They were unorganization, totally anti organization.
Darius Jankiewicz: They. came from different churches, and before 1844 they were expelled from various churches because they were Millerites. So they believed that organized church is like Babylon. Okay, so we don't want to have anything to do with Babylon, so we're not going to organize ourselves. So the early phase of Adventist history from about 1844 to 1850, we see that they have nothing to do with organization.
Darius Jankiewicz: But then They realized that they cannot do mission work without some kind of organization. They realized that there were false preachers who would come to different congregations, different Sabbatarian congregations, and they would proclaim that they are coming from the leadership and they would fleece the congregations out of money, so [00:26:00] they decided that we need to do something different, okay? And this is where James and Joseph, James White and Joseph Bates, they basically began to apply things to Adventism from what they've learned in previous denominations. So Joseph Bates and James White were never ordained in Adventist church.
Darius Jankiewicz: Did you know that? They were never ordained within the Adventist church. They were ordained in Christian Connection in a previous denomination when, and they became Millerites, when they became Millerites, they already were ordained pastors. So they come into Adventism. Okay. And they say, okay, we need to tell people that These preachers who are itinerant, all Adventist preachers at that stage were itinerant, they were on horseback, they were going from place to place preaching the gospel, but how do you distinguish a false preacher from a true preacher?
Darius Jankiewicz: So they decided to give every true preacher a little card, which said, person is [00:27:00] commissioned by the, our group coming they didn't call themselves Adventists yet, that's the Seventh day Adventists, they were Sabbatarian believers, but they coming from James White, Ellen White, and Joseph Bays, they are true guys, you can trust them, so they got the cards, and they decided at the same time when they started writing those little cards for the itinerant preachers, that they would lay hands on them.
Darius Jankiewicz: They didn't see anything wrong with this, and since their hands were laid on them in the past, so they decided to bless those people, okay? When you give them a card, you bless them. And this is perfectly biblical. It is called a functional understanding of laying on of hands. That this is to a specific function, nothing to do with a sacramental view, as in Catholic Church.
Darius Jankiewicz: But as we grew as a denomination, especially when Fundamentalism hit us in the late 19th century, early 20th century, and we started bringing more Catholics into Adventist Church. Those who were formerly Catholics, those who were fundamentalist people, [00:28:00] they brought, tended to bring with themselves a more sacramental view of ministry, more hierarchical.
Darius Jankiewicz: view of ministry. And as Ellen White, when Ellen White died in 1915, and then in subsequent years, we turned ordination more into a promotion, more into a kind of sacramental view, which I could probably, that's a big word, but sacrament, sacramental means that it has something to do with salvation, mediation type of thing.
Darius Jankiewicz: And then we realized that we cannot have women being doing this. Okay. And some people started using the biblical biblical evidence for this and so on. But in general, the, for early pioneers, the earliest from my knowledge the laying on of hands that this Credentials cards were simply to let people know who those people are and laying on of hands was just to bless them to do the work.
Darius Jankiewicz: But we had many women evangelists, many women fulfilling various [00:29:00] positions in the church at that stage. In fact, the Adventist church was avant garde, it was cutting edge of Christianity because we had women involved in ministry and women involved in pastoring churches. There were women pastors, it was women who established many churches up until within the 19th century and they all started dying out in the 20th century.
Darius Jankiewicz: When Ellen White died in 1915, we suddenly started moving away from from this issue of having women in ministry, but we can talk more about it next, next time.
Jarrod Stackelroth: Just to roll back a little bit, Darius, and to understand a bit more what you're saying about ordination, because I'm sitting here and I'm listening and I'm going yeah, yeah.
Jarrod Stackelroth: I've, that flies with me, the New Testament laying on of hands. I remember acts and things. But some people use in, in, in their setting up of the ordination system and the narrative. And even, when you go into churches today, you'll see a sign at the front that says, this is the Lord's sanctuary, be ye reverent, that sort of thing.
Jarrod Stackelroth: [00:30:00] So I guess conflating the Old Testament priestly system and the current ordination system, some people would say, yeah, but. the priests were set apart. They were a caste or a group of people who were separate and they mediated, they ministered on behalf of the people. , and so as you were describing sort of ordination, what it looks like.
Jarrod Stackelroth: Today, some of that might come to people's minds and they might say, hang on, the New Testament did look a little bit different as the Holy Spirit was just changing things up. But we do have some evidence for ecclesiology that comes from the Old Testament. Can you speak a little bit about why or why not it might be different for us?
Jarrod Stackelroth: Why our pastors and priests aren't necessarily equivalent, why our churches and our sanctuary isn't necessarily equivalent, because I think that's a really important argument, linchpin in this whole conversation.
Darius Jankiewicz: Absolutely. [00:31:00] Well, first of all you remember from Old Testament that it was entire nation that was called to be a priestly nation.
Darius Jankiewicz: And then the whole nation apostatized, at the Mount Sinai and God instituted priestly ministry of the Levites. So the institution of priestly ministry of Levites was direct response to the fact that Israel needed some kind of a Re educating the type of situation because they were just slow to learn.
Darius Jankiewicz: So God instituted the priestly ministry of Levites they were the hands were laid on them by the entire Congregation, everybody laid hands on Levites once and for all and they were dedicated to the ministry, but Priestly ministry was limited to Aaronic line as you know Strictly to Aaronic line and what priestly ministry represented in Old Testament was they were pointing to Christ to a future fulfillment in Christ.
Darius Jankiewicz: So there were function as mediators to teach people about God, about his nature, about [00:32:00] his character and about the coming Messiah. Okay. And then Messiah comes and you will see what's happening when Jesus died. Something absolutely thoroughly significant happens at the temple at the moment of his death.
Darius Jankiewicz: The curtain is torn apart. What does it signify? It signifies the end, the absolute end of Old Testament mediation type of ministry, because now we have Christ who is at the right hand of God mediating for us. We don't need priestly mediation. We are all in under the priesthood of all believers, as Peter would say, we are all priestly.
Darius Jankiewicz: people now. We are all priests, so to speak. So this is the introduction of the priesthood of all believers. So we do not, we no longer need mediation. And this is how the early Christianity perceived perceived what we find in the Bible, that Jesus is our only mediator. That we don't need priestly [00:33:00] mediation.
Darius Jankiewicz: We don't need human beings to go to God. We go directly to God via faith through the ministrations of Christ who sits at the right hand of God. He's our mediator. He's the only mediator. This is very emphatic. But when the apostles died in the second century, people began to think, hey, That old system was not so bad.
Darius Jankiewicz: Okay, we, we could go back to this and slowly, bit by bit, as I taught in my classes, slowly, bit by bit, the Catholic Church, or it was not called Catholic yet at that stage, begins to stitch the temple's curtain. They imagine this, they're bringing the curtain together in the temple and begin to take this big needle and big thread and begin to stitch it, stitch the curtains the temple's curtain, and reintroducing the priestly mediation once again into the church.
Darius Jankiewicz: So by the end of the second century, we've got [00:34:00] pastors and bishops are beginning to be called priests. Okay, and by the middle of the third century, the priestly mediation is established in the Catholic Church. That means you cannot go to God without a priest. You have to have a priest, and this is especially evident with the sacrament of Eucharist, because when priest blesses the wine and the bread, the wine and bread literally become the real body of Christ.
Darius Jankiewicz: and blood of Christ. This is called transubstantiation or change of substance. So before the bread and wine, just regular bread and wine, when they are blessed, they become a real blood and body of Christ. And you don't see it, you don't taste it, you don't eat, the real body of Christ, but the substance of it, and it comes back to Greek philosophy coming into the Christianity and influencing this idea, but the substance of it is the [00:35:00] body of Christ.
Darius Jankiewicz: So literally, priest is giving you the body of Christ. And at that very moment, salvation, grace of salvation comes into you. You receive the grace of God. It cannot happen without priestly mediation. Therefore, by the fourth century, a Christian thinker, Jerome, said that a church cannot exist without ordained ministry because they bring God to you, so there was a reintroduction of Levitical ministry back into Christianity and it was totally unbiblical and it introduced all kinds of abuses in the church. It meant that the church held salvation in its hands and distributed salvation and the church used it for fundraising big time, so this is the very cause of Reformation.
Darius Jankiewicz: The fundraising, as you remember from Great Controversy, Johann Tetzel was going through Germany, fundraising for the Basilica of, future Basilica of St. Peter in Rome, [00:36:00] okay? And Luther got so upset. How did he fundraise? He offered salvation. The church held to salvation, you buy salvation you will get, it will build you a church.
Darius Jankiewicz: As a result, every Catholic church today, and this is extremely important what I'm going to say. Every Catholic church today is a sanctuary of God with its own priest. who mediates for God. We Adventists, what do we believe? Where is our sanctuary? It is in heaven. Christ is in heaven. So every priest is a replacement of Christ in the earthly sanctuary.
Darius Jankiewicz: This is hugely significant. And unfortunately, when we begin to use as Adventists, when we begin to use the Old Testament categories and apply them to church ministry today, we are going back to traditional Catholic understanding of ministry. And this is what we're supposed to move away from.
Darius Jankiewicz: Okay, because we are [00:37:00] Protestants, we believe in priesthood of all believers. We are not to reintroduce mediation, human mediation within Christianity. So this is a very significant issue that we're talking about right now.
Maryellen Hacko: Wow. That is absolutely huge. Yeah. As you're talking, I'm, I'm listening to all these I guess, Catholic symbolism and the role of the priest is Jesus and all of that.
Maryellen Hacko: But I'm thinking, Adventist pastors. Aren't what I would call equivalent to priests in the sense that I've never been to my past. No, no, exactly. Absolutely. But in what way or what sort of mirrors are there between, maybe the role that we've put on pastors and priests, because I know in my experience, for example, and this is not a very good example, but I do become, less active in my personal ministry because I might sit back, just enjoy the church service and the pastor can do all the work for me.
Maryellen Hacko: Are there other subtle ways in which we [00:38:00] have brought some of that, non biblical role into the role of pastors?
Darius Jankiewicz: Yes, when you look at the Catholic Church, and I visited many Catholic Churches, you do not see the Bible in Catholic Churches, because who gives you all the answers?
Darius Jankiewicz: When I did Bible studies with Catholic people, they would usually say to me, let me go and ask a priest, and priest would tell, don't listen to that Adventist, because they listen to me. So depending on the character of the person, whether they were happy with their priest or they're not happy with their priest, they would listen to me, but in Catholic Church, remember the distinction I gave, there's a teaching church and there's taught church. This is the function of the bishops in the church who are the most, the bishop we sometimes think that pope is the most important person in the catholic church. The bishops are as a group.
Darius Jankiewicz: Bishops are the teaching church and pope is the bishop of Rome. He's a first bishop, so to speak but without the bishops, there will be no pope. So bishops are a very important part of the church, and they are the teaching church. [00:39:00] They give the explanation of the scripture. When you look at the papal flag, the papal flag has two keys, right?
Darius Jankiewicz: There's a papal tiara and two keys underneath, and those keys indicate jurisdiction of the church and teaching authority. So the church provides you with interpretation. You don't go to the Bible on your own. You depend on the church. And of course you have to, we are, as Adventists, depend on the church as well.
Darius Jankiewicz: We work together as a community, but this is a communal understanding what the scripture is saying. It's not an elite group among us who have a special kind of knowledge like the bishops in Catholic Church have through the rite of ordination. Okay, so answering your question, Mary Ellen, it is true that early Adventists do not, did not have such a thing as settled pastors.
Darius Jankiewicz: We do have that today, that there's, he is the pastor of Parramatta Church, he's a pastor of Charlestown Church and so on. There was no such thing in early Adventism. There was no such [00:40:00] thing in the early Christianity. Early Christianity only had elders who were supervising the church. They were overseers of the church, over the church.
Darius Jankiewicz: The pastor's function were basically evangelistic. like early, early Adventist pastors would go around and establish new churches on a horseback, and they were not settled over the church, so to speak. I'm not saying that it's wrong that we have settled pastors now, but what I'm saying is that it can lead to a perception that pastor We're paying the pastor to do the job.
Darius Jankiewicz: Okay, we don't have to do the job. This is unbiblical. In the Bible, in Ephesians chapter 4 verse 12, the role of the leadership in the church is to prepare God's people for works of service. We could say equip. Okay, for the works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up. So what is the role of all the gifting, especially the gifts of leadership, is not to rule over people, or we could have another lecture on this, that's not to have [00:41:00] authority over people, it's to equip people, it's to build people, so that people like you, Mary Ellen, would be equipped for ministry.
Darius Jankiewicz: around you, wherever you are with your neighbors, we're in your church. So they are there to make you work. This is not quite like that in traditional Christianity, but it's a biblical Christianity. And I believe it would do us well if we were, if we would return to that model.
Jarrod Stackelroth: Speaking of which Darius, one of the things I guess that separates the current church membership from the ordained.
Jarrod Stackelroth: If you'd like to call them that is I guess the ability to do baptisms, the ability to preside over communion and that sort of thing. You're
Darius Jankiewicz: opening a can of worms. I
Jarrod Stackelroth: don't want to get you into too much trouble, but maybe just a little bit because we like to get practical here. But do you think that if that [00:42:00] seems to inhibit the mission.
Jarrod Stackelroth: If you have to wait for a pastor to, to baptize those people. I don't know that there are some remote areas in our division where the pastor only visits, once every three months. And so they have to plan these baptisms and get the, but the elders should. Be able to do some of those roles. Yes.
Jarrod Stackelroth: Shouldn't they?
Darius Jankiewicz: So let me just give you a little bit of a background a Christian background of what actually happened. So within early Christianity from the end of second century, and you see those second century and third century are absolutely crucial. I spent a lot of my time in those two centuries, and I can understand a lot of things, what happened afterwards.
Darius Jankiewicz: So though this is a very crucial period of time in that, at that stage, then. Functions, primary functions of the church like administering baptism and administering Lord's Supper were limited to the bishops. Okay. And the delegates, who are the priests? Every priest is a, so to speak, [00:43:00] delegate of vicar in, in Latin is a o of the bishop, representative of the bishop in a given area.
Darius Jankiewicz: Okay. And only bishops. have that power that they can actually do something. So, what do they do? In, 3rd, 4th, 5th century, a teaching came into the church that baptism changes your soul. Okay? So when bishop or priest baptizes you, your soul is adjusted in such a way that a pipe is open for the reception of God's grace that you're going to receive through other sacraments, particularly through the Eucharist, which is Lord's Supper.
Darius Jankiewicz: Without that opening baptism, the Lord's Supper will not work for you in terms of salvation. And the only person who can do this was a priest. Okay, in emergency in Catholic Church, some other people can do it, but in , general life of the church, only priest can do this. And only priest can administer the Lord's Supper because priest through the rite of ordination [00:44:00] receives a special gift that allows him to change the body, the wine and bread into a real body of Christ.
Darius Jankiewicz: Without this, there's no salvation, basically. So you have to be baptized and you have to participate in the rite of the church, all done by ordained priests. So nobody else can do those functions. Only ordained people and when you ordain people in Catholic Church, only ordained people can ordain other people because they already have this special gift called Charisma Veritatis Certum.
Darius Jankiewicz: It's a gift of distinguishing truth from error, special gift that is given to them by the Holy Spirit. When they receive that gift, it changes them inside in such a way that when they ordain somebody else. It changes them as well. So a practice within Christianity arose that only ordained people can ordain other people because if non ordained people ordain new people, nothing happens.
Darius Jankiewicz: So only ordained people can ordain other people. Within our [00:45:00] church, we had a little bit different tack on this, okay? When we began to limit the baptism administration of the Lord's Supper to the pastor, it was because of a church order, not because of the special powers that the pastor had, we agreed as a church, there's nothing in the Bible about this, who should baptize or who should administer Lord's Supper and so on, there's not a single word, we agreed as a church at the beginning of our existence for the sake of gospel order, that only pastors should administer it.
Darius Jankiewicz: Amen. the baptism, so we can count each other, we can know who is who, we can get the books right, and everything, rather than have chaos, have an order, as James White would say, we need order in the church, and same with the Lord's Supper, that we decided that only Ordained people would do the supper, not because they have special powers, not because they elevated higher than anybody else, but because we simply agreed to do this.
Darius Jankiewicz: So I give you an [00:46:00] example. There is this island of Pitcairn that we, many of us have heard about, and there is this particular brother Tay who goes to Pitcairn, and he converts the entire island, but he feels he cannot baptize because he's not ordained. person and he's upset that he cannot do anything for those people and he sends a request after request Please come to pitkin.
Darius Jankiewicz: I need you to baptize people and somebody ordained come and baptize those people And so on and nobody's coming. You know pitkin is and you know how long it takes to get there, by the boat and everything. So finally, somebody comes and baptizes all the people that he prepared for baptism.
Darius Jankiewicz: When Ellen White found out about this, she said, all right, when there is a pastor, let him baptize. But there is no pastor. Let the person baptize who is right there on that field. Let him do it. And he uses this fantastic word. It is man's fixing. Men's [00:47:00] fixing. It means we agreed on this. It is not of God's order.
Darius Jankiewicz: So she does not dismiss the idea that elders and pastors and really truly elders can actually administer Lord's Supper and elders can baptize people. She does not dismiss that idea, but she also says this is our agreement. That's it. We agreed and if we need to do something else for the needs of the mission, we need to do that.
Darius Jankiewicz: So that's the distinction. Nothing to do with salvation. This is why things like baptism, Lord's Supper, confirmation, ordination are called in the Catholic Church, sacraments, because they are the means of grace. This is how God brings grace. to people. We as Protestants do not accept this at all. That's why we call them ordinances, not sacraments.
Darius Jankiewicz: So we have a different system. But when we bring people, that's one last thing that I want to say, and you can ask your question. This is really animates me. When we do Bible studies with people, [00:48:00] what do we teach people? Okay, we teach people about Sabbath, we teach people about Second Coming, we teach people about Sanctuary, we teach people about State of the Dead and all those important Adventist doctrine.
Darius Jankiewicz: Usually not one Bible study is about the nature of church and the role of the ministry. So when we have people coming into Adventist church, they bring preconceived ideas. So in Poland, my But that's my background. I'm Polish by birth. I came to Australia at the age of 22. Poland is a very Catholic country.
Darius Jankiewicz: So, so Adventism has a very Catholic flavor in some way. You know what I'm saying? And Latin America would be the same, because people often come to the church and treat pastors, they treat Catholic priests. Because nobody taught them what is the difference between a protestant pastor and between a catholic priest and ecclesiology or doctrine of the church Catholic understanding of church is completely different than a protestant understanding of the church or adventist understanding of the church, but [00:49:00] we When we bring new people, we don't teach them about this.
Darius Jankiewicz: So they bring their ideas with them. And partly, this is why we argue about women's ordination.
Jarrod Stackelroth: I'm gonna, I'm gonna be a little bit cheeky here, Darius. I'll try and keep everyone on side. But when you were describing how we made the call to only let certain people baptize so we could count the numbers and keep order in the I know what you're going to
Darius Jankiewicz: say.
Jarrod Stackelroth: It reminded me of David's King David's census and sort of inhibiting the work of God or, and it has some dangers, but in what you were saying, I guess you've given us a really good explanation and a broad sort of thing. Is it just semantics? Because you're saying there's different labels and we've done the work.
Jarrod Stackelroth: Some of us have done the work. Scholars like yourself have done the work to trace, a different path. But then, as you said, many people come in and may not get it explained to them. And so it's just a different label. We have a language. We have an Adventist bubble. [00:50:00] We have that because it's ironic to me that some of the most, there is skepticism around the Catholics and we can In our church history, we've been very anti Catholic which hopefully we're getting better at moderating and modifying that language, but we've been very negative.
Jarrod Stackelroth: And yet it seems some of the most strident people who are some of the most fundamental, as you say, and are most anti Catholic are the ones that most embrace the traditional understanding of ordination. And it just doesn't make sense to me how that follows through and you've explained culturally there's some issues.
Jarrod Stackelroth: Maybe they've come in against and away from the Catholic church, but they've retained some of that flavor. So maybe helping to explain that could help.
Darius Jankiewicz: It is modern semantics Gerard, for example, coming back to the very word ordination. When Tertullian in the, by the end of the 2nd century introduces the word ordinatio into Christianity or the word [00:51:00] ordination into Christianity, did not exist in Christianity before him.
Darius Jankiewicz: He's the first one in Christian history by the end of 2nd century to introduce the word ordinatio, ordination. Okay, the word was already loaded. It was loaded with meaning and it was brought into Christianity. And when people heard the word ordination, they instantly thought hierarchy. Okay so it's more than semantics.
Darius Jankiewicz: Sometimes we have to be careful because in our terminology, the words are loaded. And we think we mean one thing and people read and hear another thing. And we need to be very careful and very clear what we mean by certain words. And this is why I believe we, we ordination in our church. Instead of first deciding what is church.
Darius Jankiewicz: what is ordination, what is the mission of the church, and then talk about those other issues. So we're putting horse in front of the cart very often, first of all, we need to clarify [00:52:00] our terminology, very important.
Jarrod Stackelroth: I think our conversation today has hopefully helped some people to clarify.
Jarrod Stackelroth: Some of those terms and where ordination comes from. It's certainly been enlightening to me. I've heard this concept before in, in piecemeal form, but it's good to get it out in that conversation. I guess we're running out of time. We are gonna speak with you next week and we're gonna get more into the nitty gritty, of gender specific, more gender specific ordination and how some of that history came about where we got to where we are today.
Jarrod Stackelroth: Oh, it's
Darius Jankiewicz: a big
Jarrod Stackelroth: history. The, the, I guess I'd be interested to hear the hermeneutic of how we, bring some of these things or the language or the interpretation that we use as a person to get to these, because I think there's a different, I think there's a different way we interpret this stuff as individuals to get us to a different place. And so I think that might be a good place to start next week. But [00:53:00] is there anything else you'd like to, is there anything else you'd like to share or that wraps up, or I guess something to take away with us because we like to be practical here on Adventist record. And this has been a theoretical theological conversation. What's the take home? Message that you wanna leave us with today?
Darius Jankiewicz: Think, think, think. I Sometimes I think that we , we do our Christianity in an unthinking way and I think it helps to know the past helps to know how certain ideas developed and so on. I don't want to be perceived that I'm criticizing the Adventist structures as we have right now. that's not my purpose. I think I would like to imbue them with different meaning. Okay, and we can talk about that next week about what is really the meaning of ministry. Who are we if we're not? Hierarchically oriented who are we really as pastors, and I will leave it for next week It's a huge discussion and dear to my heart, but I think That God [00:54:00] called us to use our brains, use our reason, use our knowledge, learn and don't just be swayed by every wind of doctrine. So we need to ground ourselves firmly in the scripture and and follow this, the scripture, not individual verses because that's the problem. That's the issue of hermeneutics. Some people look at one verse and they build the entire. ecclesiology on this one verse. You can't do this. We have to look at the whole scripture, what the scripture says, and the examples in the scriptures, and then as a community build our Protestant Adventist ecclesiology.
Jarrod Stackelroth: We hope you enjoyed this week's podcast. We will be back next week with Dr. Darius, and we will have the second part of this conversation, which covers women's ordination and the issues around that in the church today. , we hope you can join us then. Until then, God bless. [00:55:00]