Headship Theology

[Gregory Matthews]

Headship Theology is a theological doctrine that has been promoted by some sections of Adventism, and rejected by other parts.  The following URL will take you to the first article in a 2-part series.  This is an important article that gives background to the origin of the doctrine within Adventism.

https://spectrummagazine.org/views/2023/history-and-analysis-headship-theology-part-1

[Kevin H]

How sad. This theology goes against Ellen White's Great Controversy philosophy. To White the law of God is self-sacrificing love/self-renouncing love. In her philosophy the members of the Godhead submit to each other.  This theology has a member of the Godhead being a sinner; taking submission but not submitting. To White the first deception of Satan is that God does not keep his own law. This theology defends and promotes Satan's first deception as truth. 

Mrs. White does describe a last generation righteousness; however, what she taught and what our current "last generation" people teach are very different as as been noted both here and in our books over and over again, including being repeated in several of my posts here.  Mrs. White saw every generation has having had some people who have reached character perfection; where they developed a totally unshakeable faith in Christ. A number of our scholars noticed that while she did not name names, her descriptions of these people sounds a lot like contemporary descriptions in her day of John Wesley. I'm noticing the same similarities in the life of Hans Nielsen Hauge. They have the faith of Job, Joseph and Daniel. No matter what they stayed faithful. Mrs. White's view of last generation perfection is based on the law of self sacrificing love, choosing against our natural selfishness to love God supremely (with the God head showing this same submission to each other that we show to them) and their neighbors as themselves. These are people who are focused on the Bible to focus upon God and to focus on serving others. People like Wesley and Hauge would face threats, attacks and punishments, but this did not stop their sharing the message of the love of God. Mrs. White is focused on the centrality of God's law of self sacrificing/self renouncing love, which is the very nature of God: including God the Father.   Her understanding of the last generation perfection is instead of it being some people here and there as there has been in every generation, that this experience becomes the experience of all of God's people at the end of time. 

In contrast, today's last generation preachers sees the last generation as having a different quality of experience from any previous generation. They become focused on themselves and their long list of Adventist traditions; among these are male headship.   [ Then we also have a group who down play last generation or any generation perfection but that the perfection comes from saying the right words about Jesus. Of course our "last generation" people try to picture everyone of us who disagrees with them as being in full agreement with this group, and attack the rest of us with a righteousness by fear approach.] 

Mrs. White sees it as a difference of QUANTITY  while these last generation people are looking for a difference of QUALITY.