Most readers of this journal know that Professor Harry Kuitert of the theological faculty at the Free University, Amsterdam, is not distinguished for his adherence to anything conventional or traditional. My personal impression when visiting a few of his classes about three years ago was that he enjoyed little more than to startle his students (and his visitors from America) with the daring and novelty of his opinions.

All of which means that those of us who oppose the present movement among us to admit women as well as men to ecclesiastical office, especially the office of elder, might hardly be expected to appeal to Dr. Kuitert for help. After all, it was under the leadership of such leaders as he that the Gereformeerde Kerken opened all church offices to women several years ago. If the established pattern stands up. this means that all the arguments used over there will be heard over here, with this addition: If they can do it there, why can‘t we do it here?

Kuitert’s Interview – The June 21, 1975 issue of Waarheid and Eenheid (“Truth and Unity” – a weekly published by a group called the verontrusten, “the disturbed,” who are fighting the anti-confessionalism and liberalism now evident in the Gereformeerdc Kerken) contains a report of part of an interview held recently with Professor Kuitert. Its significance for us will become evident from the following translation:

The interviewer asks:

“An oft-used objection is: he who begins by loosening the screws at the point of the Book of Genesis must of necessity end with the resurrection.”

Prof. Kuitert answers:

“The falacy in such reasoning, it seems to me, is that people think that something is really nailed down if it says so in the Bible. I think that you have to start there. Surely we do not ascribe credibility to the biblical proclamation simply because the Bible says it, but rather because we have listened to the content of that proclamation (and) because we have experienced it as the Word of God. Something is not firmly fixed simply because it says so in the Bible, and therefore it does not come to be at loose screws if you say: that we can no longer go along with. I’d like to use the synod of the Gereformeerde Kerken which admitted the woman (ecclesiastical) office as an example. No matter how you twist or turn, in the New Testament admitting women to office is not only unthinkable, it is expressly rejected in a number of epistles. W11en a synod nevertheless does admit the woman to office, does it put the Gospel in an insecure position? I wouldn‘t know why. Unless one anchors such a faith in a certain view of the Bible. Then I would like to say: the last anchor of your faith does not lie surely in a particular view of the Bible? In the last analysis your faith is anchored in the God who Himself addresses man. Where else could your final certainty come from? To express this with an old psalm versification: I have heard it myself out of His own mouth.”

A Few Observations – Consider the following:

1. I think that one has to agree with Professor Kuitert when he asserts that the New Testament expressly forbids the admission of women to ecclesiastical office, especially the teaching and ruling office (alder) (1 Cor. 14:34; I Tim. 2:12). The simple meaning of such passages has to be, as Kuilert says, that such a practice was out of the question. 2. We would be too simple, however, if we should think that this in any sense settles the issue for proponents of the women-in-office practice. What the Gereformeerde Kerken were and arc asking, and what we after them are asking, is the question, How do you approach the Bible? What is the Bible for you? Is it in any real and simple sense the infallible Word of God? Is it the infallible, special revelation from God, once for all delivered, or can we use it (among other things, perhaps) to discover His will? This whole business is graced by the formidable expression, “the hermeneutical problem.” 3. More specifically, hermeneutics has to do with one’s principles of interpretation. The Reformed tradition has known this area of discussion and debate for a long time. There is a real difference in manner of interpretation between the more doctrinal among us and the more experimental, between those who were satisfied to stress the truth and those who stressed the experience of truth in the way of conversion and sanctification. But basically these two poles of opinion started at the same point: God speaks to us infallibly in His inspired Word, the Bible, and all that we know of the Truth of God can be known from and according to it alone (Belgic Confession, Art. VII). 4. There is in our time an obvious ignorance of (did you ever notice how unknowing extraordinarily brilliant people on television quiz shows can be of the most prominent facts?) and a deep dissatisfaction with the Bible as norm and standard of faith and morals, and an attendant interest in the Bible as a kind of abstruse and mystical source of interesting and satisfying information. The Word has become something occult for many, revealing the action or influence of supernatural agencies or some secret knowledge of them. This is, of course, less troublesome than the old–fashioned notion that what the Bible calls sin and evil is wrong, and what the Spirit has led the Church to pronounce as dogma is truth.

5. Please be sure that people will find a kind of “word of God” somewhere! In the days of the Harry Emerson Fosdick modernists (against whom J. Gresham Machen fought so valiantly) that “word” came from the exalted human spirit in the way of reason and science. These are still dominant in our time and in our civilization, but there is a difference. The inability of reason and science to create the desired “new earth” populated by a liberated, happy, and above-all well-fed, well-housed and very well-entertained people has been dramatically exposed by World II, Vietnam, Watergate, the venereal disease epidemic, and the current economic recession. Where shall we turn? We lost the Bible decades ago, and we can‘t make it with reason and science alone. The modern answer seems to be that we must add the “spiritual dimension,” We must re-work our thinking to include the mysterious, the secret resources of that strange and wonderful realm. Insofar as Scripture can help us, good! But if the silly gurus from India can help us, shower them with dollars and join the transcendental meditation society!

6. Please note that a great intellect like Dr. Kuitert falls back on the most glaring kind of mysticism (the teaching that one can gain knowledge of God by other means than His Word, by intuition, direct communication, interaction of personality, the pious exercise of group dynamics, etc.). He tells us that the synod of his church (rightly, of course, if it were true) preferred the voice of God to the express sayings of Scripture. This claim has always been made by those who believed that they had a direct and personal access to the knowledge of God outside of the Bible. This claim has most generally been rejected by the Reformed tradition. Anyone can consult the textbooks on Reformed doctrine and discover this for himself.

7. From which we conclude that the danger of ollr time is nothing less than an open and very convinced rejection of that tradition. I know too that traditionalism is another evil, and one of no mean proportions. But I think it would be fair of all participants in the current debate to be as candid as Professor Kuitert. Let us not do, as I am told a recent representative of the women–in-office movement did before a most prestigious gathering of Reformed school teachers, present the issue simply as a better and more enlightened Bible interpretation without frank indication that the older principles of interpretation have been and must be rejected in favor of “the new hermeneutic.” And let us be honest enough to admit that the difference between these methods of interpretation is such as to make possible the suggestion that the Holy Spirit has just now enabled some to see that we have never really read the Word aright before.

John H. Piersma is pastor of the Bethany Christian Reformed Church of South Holland, Illinois.