It happens time and again. In their zeal to promote the cause of women in ecclesiastical office, the proponents of this view often fall for argumentation that is weak and sensational, with little apparent regard for sound scriptural interpretation and exegesis. Such arguments may appear plausible to those who arc not given to thinking, but serious students will soon detect their shallowness.

An example appeared recently in the Reformed Joumol. Marcienne Rienstra in the course of an article wrote:

Why are the two injunctions of Paul telling women to keep silence and learn in submission turned into key texts for the interpretation of all scriptural teaching and seen as timeless commands rooted in creation order; while at the same time, other commands of our Lord – the command to wash each other‘s feet, or to go on missionary journeys with only a staff, or to fast secretly – are relegated to another age and taken as strictly optional?

Apart from some misrepresentation and an obvious over-statement of the case, 1 submit that this type of argumentation is really not even worthy of serious refutation. No attempt whatsoever is made to read let alone understand) the actual words of these various injunctions in their specific contexts. They are simply lumped together in one category.

But anyone who takes the time to read passages in their historical setting must observe an obvious difference between them. Although we no longer walk along dusty Palestinian roads in sandals and our mission work is not limited to Palestine and the lost house of Israel, foot-washing and the holy kiss are not therefore “relegated to another age and taken as strictly optional.” They remain in force today, but in a different form. The form changes, the norm abides. To confuse the two is inexcusable.

Paul’s admonitions regarding the behavior of women in the churches deal not with changing applications but with fundamental principles. In them Paul does not just talk about “what is proper” (as he does with regard to the veil, I Cor. 11:13) or about local customs which change from place to place and from age to age, but he goes back to the very beginning of creation and the fall into sin! That’s not subject to historical change. And that is the point which we must see. Let me quote from the Postscript by the Rev. P. M. Jonker found in the 1973 Acts of Synod:

It is beyond doubt that many of the instructions or commands given regarding the behavior of men and women have to be understood in the light of the historical-cultural situation in which the New Testament church had its place, and which for that reason are not in the same way (Ital., J.T.) binding for the church of all ages.

A difficulty arises, however, when the apostJc Paul makes reference to the order of creation (I Tim. 2: 13), to what the law says (I Cor. 14:34), and to the fact that woman was the first who fell in Transgression (I Tim. 2:14). Paul concludes from these references that the woman ought to accept a place of submissiveness within the church.

I fail to see that this reference to God‘s revelation in the Old Testament can be considered as time-conditioned, i.e., as being related to the social structure of the time in which Paul lived and in which the early church had to find its place (p. 589).

More need not be said. The fact that this crucial point is often ignored altogether by proponents of women office-bearers, and that not one has yet appeared to answer this objection to putting women in office, tells me that it is indeed the big hurdle in the way of female elders in the church.

J. Tuininga is pastor of the First Christian Reformed Church of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canado.