1980’s Short, Efficient Synod

From all reports the spirit and the efficiency of Synod 1980 was exemplary. There was little rancor, we are told, and the whole business was brought to the earliest conclusion (Wednesday of the second week) in my memory. Praise the Lord!

For some this proves that the wrong people have been going to synod. We need people who are “positive,” not “negative,” who have “faith in the decision-making process of the Christian Reformed Church,” and so forth.

The great illustration of the good that synods can do is said to be its decision on the H. Boer gravamen against the doctrinal statements on double predestination or reprobation in the Canons of Dort. Look, these people say, how the synod easily reached agreement on the recommendations of the Study Committee, asking that this gravamen be rejected.

Again, praise the Lord! To whatever extent the Boer position was denied by the Christian Reformed Church and the regular, historic position of the Reformed Faith affirmed, we say, great! May the church ever show herself unwilling to compromise with error or deviate from the Truth.

1981’s Threatening Storm

There is, however, a significant difference between the way the most important issue of 1980 (the Boer gravamen on reprobation) came to the floor of synod and the way that the most important issue of 1981 (the admission of women to the office of deacon) will most likely get there.

To put it quickly and simply: It is one thing to decide a matter which comes as the recommendation of all or more of a Study Committee; it is quite another to resist and reject such a recommendation.

“Stacked” Committees

The smart people in the church have known this for a long time. They are careful, therefore, to see that the “right people” get on these important and very influential committees. These are not usually people coming “from the right” in the church, except in a minority of instances. They are also a rather restricted group. I think it was a California consistory which brought to synod’s attention not many years ago that the personnel on synodical study committees appointed in recent decades was dominated by a relatively small group of people.

That is why—to bring up a painful subject there was such a fuss about t he study committee appointed in 1979 “to review without prejudice the 1978 report on ‘Hermeneutical Principles Concerning Women in Ecclesiastical Office’ and the decisions of the Synod of 1978 regarding the ordination of women as deacons.” That committee as originally appointed consisted of the following: Dr. Richard De Ridder and Dr. Andrew Bandstra (both of Calvin Seminary), John De Haan (executive director of the Christian Reformed World Relief Committee), Dr. James De Jong (Dordt College), Dr. Henrietta Ten Harmsel (Calvin College), Rev. Edward Van Baak (Area Secretary, Board of World Missions), Rev. Henry Vander Kam (Doon, Iowa), Mrs. Mary Vander Vennen and Rev. Jacob B. Vos (both of Toronto).

In the Acts of Synod 1980 this committee appears as follows (note the change): Dr. De Ridder, Mr. De Haan, Dr. De Jong, Rev. Van Baak, Rev. Vander Kam, Mrs. Vander Vennen, Ms. Nola Opperwall (graduate of Calvin Seminary, employed, I understand, by a Grand Rapids publishing house), Rev. Peter Jonker of Richmond, B.C., Dr. Carl Kromminga of Calvin Seminary.

Those of us who think that we know a few people in the Christian Reformed Church were never very hopeful that this “review without prejudice” would turn out in favor of the position that Scripture refuses the admission of women to office in the church.

Our suspicions appear now to be well–founded. A rather substantial rumor going about these days has it that the committee recently took a poll of its members. The result:

Only one was willing to declare himself opposed to the opening of the office of deacon in the church (one other wasn’t sure, and is said to be a possible member of what looks like the smallest possible minority).

This means that for the fourth time synod will face a recommendation allowing such a change in our church polity.

The Important Issue: Rightly Reading the Bible

May I offer a few observations in this connection?

1) Please be sure that this is not an unimportant matter! The issue of women in ecclesiastical office has been and is being fought out most everywhere in Christian churches, both Roman Catholic and Protestant. Only a few of the most conservative of Reformed denominations have escaped this controversy. Even more important is t he fact that this issue has often brought dissention, disagreement and great disturbance to God’s people. Even such well–managed and sophisticated groups as the greater Anglican communion was unable to avoid a split on this issue. Let us pray for the true peace of  Zion!

2) There are two big words in the mandate of the Study Committee which require careful attention. The one is hermeneutical the other is office.* If you read THE BANNER, look in back issues for Dr. Lester De Koster‘s editorializing on “hermaneutic” (I think the spelling is correct). The whole matter of office is discussed in what has been described by a very competent person as “the most dangerous report ever to appear before a Christian Reformed synod,” the 1973 report entitled “Guidelines for Understanding the Nature of Ecclesiastical Office and Ordination.” I hope and trust that THE OUTLOOK will devote lots of space to this Report during the next months. All of us need very much to be enlightened on precisely what this Report says. Believe me, it says a great deal, and it calls for a radical reinterpretation of everything we have done as church.

3) Read and re-read 1 Timothy 2, 3! I recommend this not only because these chapters are part of the inspired and authoritative Word of God, but because it will then become plain that there is a very serious issue at stake in all of this. The following has been said before, I know, but it needs to be said very often if we are to know what we are doing and where we are. People who can read this part of Scripture to mean deacons do not have to be male members of the church must have a different method of reading the Bible than many of us own. (For that reason we of The Testimony—write to THE OUTLOOK for a copy if you have never seen it—are called “fundamentalists” by those who disagree with our position on this matter. And they are absolutely correct, if reading the Bible literally makes one a fundamentalist.) My point here is only this: There simply has to be an incredibly great difference of opinion to allow one person to say, “The Bible allows women to hold office in the church,” and another that “The Bible does not allow that.” That does require a different “hermeneutic.” Such profound differences are very dangerous, of course.

4) The attack upon the historic position of the Christian church will come not only from “liberals” who care little for the literal, obvious teaching of Scripture, but also from some who profess to have gained this “new light” by careful and consistent interpretation of a Bible they claim to believe and appreciate as God’s Word. For example: a new book by Paul K. Jewett is being announced in the Fall 1980 “Theologist Catalog,” a Wm. B. Eerdman‘s listing of recent and forthcoming publications in the fields of Religion, Theology, and Biblical Studies. The book is entitled, The Ordination of Women.

This is the way it is introduced by this publisher:

Now, in The Ordination of Women, Jewett argues that on the basis of the Christian ideal of the partnership of the sexes, women ought to share fully with men the privileges and responsibilities of church ministry. He does so by reviewing and then refuting three main arguments for excluding women from the ministry and other positions of leadership in the church.

For those who don’t know who Paul K. Jewett is, let me say that he is Professor of Systematic Theology at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Cal. Fuller has altered some of its attitudes and opinions since the day of its founding under the sponsorship of Charles E. Fuller, the very conservative, fundamentalist, dispensationalist radio preacher. But it still isn’t considered to be radically liberal, in fact, it would lay claim to being a Bible-believing theological seminary. Out of it comes such a book!

This means that it is going to be a very hard fight for those who will not yield to the pressures strong and impressive advocates of the new position present.

I hope that we are up to the task!

As we are being compelled to face this issue of women in office we urge our readers to get, study and promote the circulation of the new, carefully prepared booklet of Paullngeneri. “A Decade of Unrest” The Issue of Women in Church Office in the CRC. It is published by and may be ordered at $1.50 per copy (postpaid/from the Reformed Fellowship, Inc., 4855 Starr St., SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49506, phone (616) 949-5421. It is designed both for individual reading and for group study.

*The Committee was instructed “to study and define the office of deacon in the light of Scripture, the Confessions, its historical development, especially within the Reformed/Presbyterian tradition, and the 1979 Guidelines for Understanding the Nature of Ecclesiastical Office and Ordination of Acts of Synod 1979, pp. 62–61,). Acts of Synod 1979, p. 122