“Women and office” in the Christian Reformed Church has been an issue as far back as 1963.

That’s when the Reformed Ecumenical Synod first named a committee to study the question.

It was officially brought to the Christian Reformed Synod seven years later, in 1970.

And it continues to be studied.

There was a sharp difference of opinion when that first study committee was named in 1963 as there is today, 20 years down the road.

The Christian Reformed Synod of 1970 did appoint a study committee as recommended . That first study committee reported to the CRC Synod of 1973. Their report was referred to the churches for study and a new study committee was appointed.

The second committee reported to the Synod of 1975 . The majority of the committee recognized on one hand that the Christian Reformed Church was not ready or willing at that time to open the offices of deacon, elder or minister of the Word to women; on the other hand they urged the synod to adopt the statement: “Biblical teaching is not opposed in principle to the ordination of women to any office that men may hold in the church.”

After prolonged debate and a spate of negative votes, the Synod declared “that the practice of excluding women from the ecclesiastical offices recognized in the Church Order be maintained unless compelling biblical grounds are advanced for changing that practice.” (Italics mine.)

Once more another study committee was appointed. Reporting in 1978, the goal of some, namely to open the offices of the church to women, was partially realized.

   

Consistories were now allowed to ordain qualified women to the office of deacon “provided that their work is distinguished from that of elders.”

The Synod of 1979, however, received such an avalanche of negative responses from classes, consistories and individuals throughout the denomination that a moratorium on the decision of 1978 was declared.

Another study committee was appointed and their report, rendered in 1981, was tabled with a new committee appointed to study “headship in the Bible.” The latter committee has not yet reported.

The prolonged history of wrestling with this very important issue has been rehearsed to demonstrate that the charge or personal judgment made by a representative of the Committee for Women in the CRC, as reported in The Grand Rapids Press on July 9, 1983, is simply not true.

The judgment was made that “most of the reasons for the reluctance in the CRC to ordain women . . . are political, not biblical.”

Political? How? Is the inference to be understood that the past Synods which have wrestled with this issue for the last 13 years have kept women out of office because the men were afraid that once the door is opened for women in ecclesiastical office they would just take over the business of the church?

The members of the four study committees that have reported to Synod have, I believe, literally pored over the teachings of Scripture.

While I, as a member of the Christian Reformed Church, may not agree with the conclusions of some members of the committees, I hardly believe that it is Christian on my part or anyone else’s for that matter to be judgmental and say that they were politically motivated.

Further, are we to understand that the synodical delegates who prayerfully considered the reports submitted to them and then acted upon them did so politically out of fear that women are about to take over? Biblical feminists, it seems to me, have raised a very legitimate question: What does the Word of God have to say about the role of women in the church today?

There is only one sufficient argument against women‘s ordination: scriptural prohibition.

Is “tradition” a legitimate part of that prohibition? Only in so far as it is in compliance with scripture. It has been said that “the church through history has been the agent that has kept women where they are . . .”

That statement, taken exactly as it stands, can be interpreted in at least two ways. One, that men have gone out of their way to keep women in. an inferior position in the church. Or, the other interpretation which, I believe, is the correct interpretation, that women have not been ordained into the offices of deacon, elder or minister of the Word in most Reformed churches because the Bible has been misunderstood to forbid it.

TheWord of God has not spoken as clearly to the majority of the Christian Reformed Church in the same manner as to the members of the Committee for Women in the CRC, some members of the Calvin Seminary faculty, study committee members, and ministers and congregations who have proceeded to install women deacons and women as adjunct elders in spite of Synod’s moratorium.

I have, however, read the synodical directive of 1983 to treat this matter “with loving concern rather that judgmental pronouncement,” and will endeavor to do so.

The off-handed but sanguine remark attributed to the president of the Synod of 1983 is much to the point. The Rev.

J.D. Eppinga is reported to have said: “Be tolerant of those who disagree with you . . . . They have a right to their ridiculous opinions.”

I would pray that those who see the issue so clearly and are impatiently running ahead of Synod and the present study committee will try to understand that their opinions may be as ridiculous to us as ours are to them.

What I and others like me are looking for is what the Synod of 1975 termed “compelling biblical grounds” for changing the practice of the church that has held for almost 2,000 years.

And not just the Christian Reformed Church but all churches that profess to hold to an inerrant view of Scripture.

I cannot now nor will I ever hold to what has been called “the feminist hermeneutics,” namely, that since the Bible was written in an entirely different culture than that of today, the biblical writers are/were prejudiced by that culture against women’s rights.

According to this approach, the Bible is fallible and can contradict itself. However, once allowance is made for “cultural conditioning,” how does one determine what parts or doctrines of Scripture are of abiding authority and value? Is human reason the final authority, the judge of Scripture?

Francis Schaeffer in an article “Schaeffer on Scripture” that appeared in the Aug. 29, 1975 issue of the magazine Christianity Today, quotes Martin Luther as having said, “If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all the battlefronts besides is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.”

Finally, it is said that “we need to change people’s hearts—which isn’t easy to do.” The “we” in the above statement refers to the Committee for Women in the CRC, and their supporters. If “compelling biblical grounds” are brought forth by the present committee on “headship,” or, from any other source, it will be much easier to change people’s minds, but hearts? Never! To change the heart requires the work of the Holy Spirit.

Up to this time the CRC has not shown a readiness to open the ecclesiastical offices to women for two reasons; first, the biblical prohibitions against it; second, no biblical command to do it.

What is needed as this very sensitive issue continues to be debated and threatens to divide the denomination is what the advisory committee recommended to the Synod of 1978: “. . . our love for Christ and his church must compel us to put our personal preferences aside, and to believe that the Spirit of truth will lead us into truth . . .”

Reprinted from the July 30, 1983 Grand Rapids Press. Rev. G. Stoutmeyer is the pastor of the Coopersville Christian Reformed Church.