The question about women serving in leading and ruling church offices is agitating many churches today, the CRC not excluded. Rev. Peter De Jong, pastor of the Christian Reformed Church of Dutton, Michigan, has given considerable study to this matter. The material here presented was in substance given in an adult education series at Oakdale Park CRC, Grand Rapids, Michigan, and also for a class at Calvin College on April 8, 1976.

The social and political movement for equal recognition for women has become extremely popular. The ERA, discrimination suits, “women‘s lib” organizations are getting a lot of attention and churches like all other institutions are under pressure to fall into line with the trend.

What ought our reaction to be? (a) The reaction of some is that is another “faddish” novelty, totally at odds with our Reformed tradition, which ought to be rejected without question. (b) The reaction of others is that this movement is just part of the changing (progressing) character of our time and society and the quicker we join it the better. (c) Neither of the previous reactions is acceptable for a (Reformed) Christian. The Bible’s teaching recovered in the Reformation is that the Scriptures, God‘s Word, are to be our only infallible rule of faith and life. And so the critical question which we need to ask is “What does the Bible—what does God say?”

   

In trying to raise that question we soon discover that trying to face the problem in that way is not as easy as one might expect. It does not quickly clear up all problems. On this matter, as on a number of others, our churches have been confronted by some long studies and reports, often with divided or unconvincing conclusions. Why? Doesn‘t the Bible really give us answers?

Herman Bavinck in his Introduction to his Reformed Dogmatics (Vol. 1, p. 125) described how the liberal movement 200 years ago attacked the Reformed faith especially by way of pious–sounding appeals to the Scriptures. We should never find that surprising. The Lord when tempted by the devil answered him with “It is written . . . . ” And the devil retorted in his next temptation with his own appeal to the Bible, “It is written . . . .”—a point Shakespeare once recalled with the observation, “The devil can cite Scripture to his purpose.” Is the Bible so ambiguous that we have to look elsewhere for guidance? Jesus answered and silenced the devil’s deceptive appeals to the Scriptures by further appeal to the same inspired Bible. In facing our current problems we have to learn again from Him, as the Reformers before us did, to look not just for selected texts that may be used to support what we want them to say, but rather to look at the whole of the written Word of God.

Defining the Issue – One of the first things we must do if we are to reach any clear or convincing conclusions about the question under discussion is to notice exactly what the question is. The question is, “What does the Bible say about women in (leading and ruling) church offices?” That question is distinct and quite different from the question whether the Bible teaches us that men and women are equal or unequal. The need to insist on this distinction becomes apparent especially when one reads the CRC Synod reports dealing with this matter.

1. The 1970 Christian Reformed Synod, asked by the Reformed Ecumenical Synod delegates to begin a study of the problem of women in church offices, appointed a committee which after three years of study brought to the 1973 Synod a 80-page report. Going through the Bible, that report points out many interesting and important truths. Observing that both men and women were created in the image of God, it calls attention to the important roles that women have taken in Bible history –Sarah, Rebekah, Miriam, Deborah, Hannah, Huldah and Esther, dismissing whatever gave men prominence in the Old Testament as just the male domination of the culture of those days. In the New Testament too, it calls attention to the prominence of women from Jesus’ birth and around Him, their being last at the cross and first at the tomb, receiving His first appearance after the resurrection, their prominence through the New Testament, receiving the Holy Spirit, the church labors of Lydia, Damaris, Priscilla, Euodia, Syntyche, and Phoebe. In spite of the male–dominated culture, the report sees the Bible as stressing their equality with men. It is all summed up in the key text, Galatians 3:26,28, “For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.” “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.”

What is the proper conclusion from all this? Arc women important in the Bible? Certainly! Are they equal with men before God as saved by faith in Christ Jesus? Absolutely! Doesn‘t that prove, as the committee labored to demonstrate, that they are therefore eligible for every office in the church? It does nothing of the kind. Their equality as Christians before Christ no more proves that they have therefore been called by the Lord to serve as elders in the church than it proves that Christian men who are also their equals have been therefore called by the Lord to serve Him in the office of bearing children!

2. Rev. Peter M. Jonker, a member of the committee, who agreed with much of what it cited from the Bible, in the six pages he felt he must add to the report as “Postscript,” showed clearly that the report by no means proved that women were called by the Lord to all the offices in the church. He cited the plain teachings of the Bible which contradict this view of the majority. He pointed out how foolish it was to attempt, as the committee did, to dodge these plain teachings of the Scriptures by attributing them to the cultural situation and to Paul’s rabbinical style of argument, when one considered that Paul’s whole gospel was directed against sin in the current culture and opposed the false teachings of the rabbis in particular. 3. The Synod of 1973 also was not at all willing to accept this committee report, and appointed a new committee to restudy the matter and report in 1975. The report of the new committee in 1975 sharply criticized the report of the earlier one. It showed how the earlier committee, in trying throughout its study to make a case for equality: (1) did not do justice to the different roles which the Bible assigns to men and women especially in the home and family and (2) used the Bible as a source of information on which to base sociological conclusions instead of as a divine revelation. After this the new report took up a number of New Testament passages which plainly showed that special church offices were not given to women. Then the argument took a curious tum. Three times it was observed that if these Scriptures were taken literally they would forbid a few things which some of our churches are already doing! “Therefore” (pp. 483, 484, 486, 488) the committee tried to find some reasons or arguments which could be given for not taking them as applying any longer! By this admitted process of trying to find reasons why we do not have to be bound by what the Bible said this committee reached the same conclusion as that of the report it criticized, that the Bible doesn’t oppose the ordination of women! A conclusion reached in that way is not the Bible’s teaching but the committee’s prejudice. When once the Bible teaching was bypassed in this way. the committee tried to determine on practical grounds whether or when women should be ordained to offices and found itself hopelessly divided. Its weak and wavering conclusions found little support anywhere.

What are the Offices We are Discussing? – Our survey of the reports and discussions up to this point have shown the need to define clearly what the real issue under discussion is. It is not, as much argumentation has assumed, whether men and women as Christians are equal before God, but whether the Bible teaches that women are eligible to hold special, particularly ruling, offices in the church. Dealing with that question forces us to give some attention to what those special offices really are and to what the Bible teaches their relationship should be to the “office of all believers.” Church “office and ordination” was the subject of another long 81-page report in the Acts of 1973 (pp. 635ff.). The question about women in church offices is not whether they are equal with men in the “office of all believers.”

A major problem in our thinking through and dealing with questions about church offices has been that through many centuries of church history this office of all believers has been largely overlooked. That can be easily illustrated. The long-popular introductory catechism book Teach Me Thy Way in its chapter on “The King’s Officers” devoted over two pages and four pictures to the pastor (the big officer!?). Nine lines and a picture of the elders his assistants, and then a few more lines and a picture to the deacons. And then the conclusion is that “Jesus gives the officers their authority. Their work is Jesus’ work. There is no more important work in all the world.” And members are urged to love, pray for, and respect them in their “often very hard” work. “They rule for Jesus.” That is all. There is in this presentation never a hint that the ordinary church member has any office at all!

Notice how totally different this portrayal of offices is from that which the Bible gives us in Ephesians 4:11ff., “And he gave some to be apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, unto the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full-grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.” In this Scripture the “office” of each believer is seen as basic and the various special offices are given in order to train and help each believer to reach maturity and effectiveness in his and her individual office of serving Christ. (The same teaching is stressed in I Corinthians 7.)

When we lose from sight that basic office of the believer and act and think as though the special offices are the only significant ones and stand by themselves, we arc left with a caricature of office which produces more trouble and problems than we can begin to trace here. One of those problems confronts us here. If we act as though the special officers—preachers, elders, and deacons—are the only important people in the church (the crew who nm the ship while the rest are passengers who go along for the ride, and incidentally, pay the fare—was a way the situation was described for many centuries) we create the problems against which from many sides, including that of the current women‘s movement, there is growing legitimate protest. The 1973 Synod report turns out to be such a reaction and protest. Appreciating the office of each believer, it calls attention to the distorted notions that special offices are to be regarded as matters of status rather than of Christian work and service. The trouble with this report on office was that it reacted from one erroneous extreme into the opposite one of claiming that the only authority of offices in the church is that of service. In fact Christ Himself was reduced to nothing but the Supreme Servant.

The Synod of 1972 pointed out this radical weakness of the committee’s first report and told it to correct that deficiency. The committee, instead of complying with that instruction, reported the next year with 20 more pages of arguments trying to further prove its point that the only authority is service. Then the Synod of 1973 tried to doctor up the result, by itself adding some statements on the Bible’s teaching about authority, rule, and obedience. Despite such corrections at the end, the prejudice running through the report against all real authority plainly reflects the anti-Christian and lawless spirit of our times rather than the plain teaching of God‘s Word, and is therefore less helpful than it might have been in dealing with our problem.

What Does the Bible, God’s Word, teach about whether God calls women to all the special offices in the Church, including those that involve authority and rule? That is our question.

1. The Old Testament – After fully recognizing all that the Bible teaches about the important place of women, created in the image of God, co-heirs of grace in Christ, as the reports of 1973 and 1975 have stressed at great length, if we ask whether God called a woman to such a leading and critical role as that of Noah, the answer is “No!” Did He call women to take the role of Patriarchs such as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? The answer again has to be “No!” Did He call a woman to lead His people out of the slavery of Egypt as a reluctant Moses was ordered to do? Again the answer has to be, “No!” The response in which “Miriam the prophetess” led the women after the song of Moses and all the people upon their deliverance at the Red Sea (Ex. 15) shows that the women were by no means mere silent partners, but does not in any sense cast doubt on the unique role the Lord assigned to Moses. Later in Numbers 12, when Miriam and her apparently weaker brother Aaron did challenge that unique calling of Moses, her arrogant presumption was knocked down with a divine judgment which neither she nor the rest of Israel could ever forget.

God assigned the unique office of priesthood to Aaron and the male members of his family. Was it because they were better or more capable than others? Of course, not. King Uzziah, emboldened by his authority and success as king, once tried to take that over (II Chron. 26) and the Lord condemned him to be an outcast with the plague of leprosy for the rest of his life instead of only temporarily as He did Miriam. Among all the thousands of priests who had to serve in this God-ordained office through many centuries. the Lord did not can one woman. It was never a matter of equality but of whom He sovereignly chose to appoint. To try to brush all this aside as “male-chauvinism” or “cultural conditioning” is to deny the very sacred character of the priests’ office as determined and assigned by God. not man (Heb. 5:4).

We see something similar in the God-given office of the kings. Not one woman was called to that position by God among His chosen people. Bloody Athaliah, the usurper. can hardly be brought up as a very convincing exception to the Lord‘s rule.

Among the prophets whom the Lord occasionally called, a few women‘s names appear, but none of them was called to the leading roles of those whose names are given to the books of the Bible. Don‘t dismiss this either as the result of a male–dominated society. The only prophets whose office and message were the products of their society or their own prejudices were the false prophets! The fact of Old Testament history is that the Lord did not ordain women to the regular offices that had to prepare for that of the coming Christ.

2. The New Testament – In the New Testament we find no change regarding this critical point. Jesus Himself was a Man. However important the unique place assigned to His mother Mary, I trust that none of us needs to be shown that the claim of some Roman Catholics that she was to be “co-mediatrix” with her Son finds no grounds in the Bible. While Jesus was singularly free from the prejudices of His time and startled His disciples by His talk with the Samaritan woman, and found a number of women among His close disciples, did He in establishing His church assign the office of apostles equally among those followers to six men and six women? No, the apostles He appointed were all men. When the Holy Spirit was poured out on Pentecost upon His followers, He was given to all of them, men and women alike, in order to prepare them to bring His gospel to the whole world. Did that mean that they all had been called by God and given the Spirit to do this in exactly the same roles and ways? The Bible states just as plainly that it did not.

While the Bible gives us no formal and complete church order, the Lord, as He had promised (John 14:16), did give us clear directions for the way in which the church is to order her life and service of Him in the inspired direction given by the apostle Paul to his assistants, Timothy and Titus. In those directions. special emphasis is placed on the need to faithfully and authoritatively teach the gospel, especially in view of the devil’s efforts to oppose and destroy it. Timothy must “hold the pattern of sound [healthful] words” heard from Paul “in faith and love which is in Christ Jesus,” must “guard” it “through the Holy Spirit which dwelleth in us” (II Tim. 1:13, 14) and must “commit it to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also” (2:2).

Because of the central importance of these offices of “ruling” and authoritatively “teaching” in the church, the Apostle gives some detailed directions as to whom the Lord calls to serve in these offices. In I Timothy 2, after first calling attention to the need for prayer for all kinds of authorities and admonishing first the men and then the women regarding their proper behavior in the church, Paul continues. “Let a woman learn in quietness with all subjection. But I permit not a woman to teach, nor to have dominion over a man, but to be in quietness” (vss. 11, 12).

We need to give close attention to the reason given for this instruction. We recall how Jesus taught us to deal with the divorce problem raised in Matthew 19. He did not enter into a hopeless debate about the cultural and practical considerations and circumstances. Instead He said, “Have ye not read, that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female . . . and the two shall become one flesh?” “What therefore God hath joined together. let not man put asunder.” Pulling them out of their pre-occupation with cultural and historical relativities, our Lord simply reminded. them of what God had shown was His purpose in and since His creation of man and woman. Now the Lord‘s inspired Apostle does exactly the same thing. He too refers us back to God‘s revelation in and since creation: “For Adam was first formed, then Eve; and Adam was not beguiled, but the woman being beguiled hath fallen into transgression” (vss. 13, 14). And then Paul calls attention to the area of life in which the Lord has assigned to women, not a position of equality with men, but one of absolute, total monopoly—a monopoly which no amount of present agitation or legislation can alter in the least—the all-important role of “childbearing.”

Thereupon Paul lists the requirements for authoritative teaching in the church. “If a man seeketh the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work. The bishop therefore must be without reproach, the husband of one wife . . . one that ruleth well his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?” (3:1, 2, 4, 5). Titus 1 contains similar instructions.

I Corinthians 14:32–28. another passage in the Bible which deals most plainly with this matter, is found in the Apostle Paul’s treatment of the disorders in the Corinthian church, especially in connection with the use and misuse of “tongues.” In an effort to reestablish the wholesome order the Lord intended for His church, the Apostle has to correct the conduct of the women there. “As in all the churches of the saints [not only in Corinth], let the women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak but let them be in subjection, as also saith the law. And if they would learn anything, let them ask their own husbands at home: for it is shameful for a woman to speak in the church.” Then, as though to anticipate and respond to the objections which this distasteful instruction would provoke and still does—Paul adds, “What? was it from you that the word of God went forth? or came it unto you alone? If any man thinketh himself to be a prophet, or spiritual, let him take knowledge of the things which I write unto you, that they are the commandment of the Lord.” And then he adds, in case anyone still wants to object, “If any man is ignorant, let him be ignorant,” or as the NIV translates, “If he ignores this, he himself will be ignored.”

Notice the grounds which the apostle gives for these instructions: God’s creation and the important but differing roles He has assigned in life, “the law,” “the commandment of the Lord.” For all who in obedience to Christ take the Bible as God’s inspired Word, these clear commands would appear to be conclusive, as they have through much of the churches’ history.

The real question – The problem today is said to be one about proper “interpretation” of the Bible, but careful study of the questions of interpretation usually show that the real question masquerading under the talk of “interpretation” is whether one is ready to obey God’s Word as the decisive authority or not.

C. S. Lewis in an essay in God in the Dock entitled, “Priestesses in the Church?” although he views matters from a slightly different perspective (as an Episcopalian) from ours, observes that the issue here is not really that of the capability of women for offices but of the nature of Christianity as revealed religion. “If we retain only what can be justified by standards of prudence and convenience at the bar of enlightened common sense, then we exchange revelation for that old wraith Natural Religion” (p. 238).

In the March 26, 1976 issue of Christianity Today the editor, Harold Lindsell, writing on “Egalitarianism and Scriptural Infallibility” (p. 45f.), points out that such writers as Nancy Hardesty, Letha Scanzoni, Virginia, Mollenkott, and Paul King Jewett, in defending their total egalitarianism, come into head-on conflict with the plain teachings of the Bible. “The way Mollenkott interprets the Bible means she cannot hold to an infallible Scripture.” Lindsell cites a Tom Stark review of Hardesty and Scanzoni’s All We’re Meant to Be, observing that “There are a number of places where the authors plainly reject Scripture, and many other places where they have used Scripture irresponsibly.” A similar review of Jewett’s book, Man as Male and Female, concludes that . . . his doctrine of inspiration allows him to set himself as a judge of the Apostle Paul, and to discard many verses in Scripture, ostensibly on the basis that they contradict one verse of Paul (Gal. 3:28), and the lifestyle of Jesus. Dr. Jewett reveals in his book a clear break from an evangelical view of the inspiration and authority of the Bible. “At stake there is not the matter of women’s liberation. What is the issue for the evangelical is the fact that some of the most ardent advocates of egalitarianism in marriage over against hierarchy reach their conclusion by directly and deliberately denying that the Bible is the infallible rule of faith and practice. Once they do this, they have ceased to be evangelical. Scripture no longer is normative. And if it is not normative in this matter why should it be normative for matters having to do with salvation?”

One can only endorse these bluntly stated observations of Lindsell, also in dealing with our problem of women in special offices. If we are to call ourselves Christians we must, as Christ and His Apostles taught us to do, submit to His inspired Scriptures as our only infallible rule of faith and life. To go through those Scriptures, a~ some of these studies have done, accepting only what gives special attention to women as God’s revelation, and to dismiss everything in them that teaches and demonstrates that despite His high exaltation of them as sharing His image and co-heirs of His grace God has not called them to every office in the church, as mere historically-conditioned male chauvinism, plainly shows that one no longer believes in an infallible Bible, but only in an infallible women’s liberation movement. That kind of religion is not the Christian religion. It looks more like the movement of anti-Christ which the Bible predicts would attempt to overthrow everything God established and commanded (II Thess. 2). It is to be hoped that those who are captivated by the current appeal of this movement may realize the direction in which it is carrying them and return to the Biblical faith to which Christ, its “Author and Finisher” and only Lord, gave His name.