Somber Thoughts on a Contemporary Difficulty in the Evangelical Churches

But lay aside the practical consequences of ordaining women pastors, as well as its obvious violation of the clear commands of Scripture….This notion that it is unfair to deny office on account of things outside the conscious control of those that want it if they have the same abilities or moral character that others who attain to it possess. It would be easy to imagine that God is unjust on this point and to ask: why, when all believers participate in the Spirit and receive understanding and spiritual gifts from him, has he not seen fit to enable all people, men and women, to be fit for all the duties and offices of the church? Because God is sovereign, and his will is independent of ours.

“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Rom. 12:2)

Our culture cannot abide the notion that any position should be denied someone who wants it on account of any trait that is outside that person’s conscious will. This is often presented as a just desire for equality between persons, but what it actually represents is the elevation of the individual will and its imagined rights above the will of the corporate bodies of which the individual is a part. The modern spirit of absolute individual autonomy says that the individual has rights where the corporate does not, and that in any conflict it is the corporate that must yield to the claims of the individual. Indeed, it is felt that the corporate body only exists to empower, affirm, and celebrate the individual in his or her attempt at self-realization.

To present an example in the civil realm, there are many who act as though the military does not exist to defend the nation, but to provide an environment in which people can climb the ranks and acquire as much remuneration, prestige, and power as they are able. It is thought unfair to prohibit women serving in the combat arms, for example, for that would limit their opportunities for advancement, as if their career ambitions are the important thing in such cases, rather than the actual needs of infantry or artillery battalions.[1]

That same spirit shows itself in the church. It is felt unfair that women should be denied the ruling and teaching offices in the church if they desire them and show themselves as having excellent moral character and much talent in teaching, administration, etc. Great numbers of people, whose sincerity and good intentions I do not for the most part doubt, are therefore agitating for change on this point, and many have gone ahead and elevated women to positions of leadership.

It is an endeavor which is somewhat understandable, for many of the practical considerations of ministry seem to commend it. We see how badly great multitudes need mercy and the good news of eternal life; and we see how many zealous and compassionate women there are among us; how much more opportunity they have to work than many men; how many of them have many useful talents that can be deployed to this end; how many of the people who need help or who have open ears to spiritual concerns are themselves women; and how many men seem apathetic about the work of ministry, and we think that practical concerns and simple fairness commend extending office to those who are eager to carry out its labors.

And yet to do such a thing encounters insuperable difficulties. Paul’s apostolic instruction concerning such matters is, “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man” (1 Tim. 2:12). Elsewhere he says, even more restrictively, that “women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says” (1 Cor. 14:34). Discussing this in a 1919 article, “Paul on Women Speaking in Church,” B.B. Warfield says that “it would be impossible for the apostle to speak more directly or more emphatically than he has d[one] here. He requires women to be silent at the church-[meeti]ngs.”[2] Nor can this be regarded as being non-binding or only the apostle’s opinion, for he explicitly claims divine inspiration for it, saying promptly thereafter in 1 Cor. 14:37 that “if anyone thinks that he is a prophet, or spiritual, he should acknowledge that the things I am writing to you are a command of the Lord.” (And of course, being part of the canon, 1 Corinthians participates in the attribute of divine inspiration with all the other books of the Old and New Testaments, as explicitly declared by 2 Tim. 3:16’s assertion that “all Scripture is breathed out by God.”)

There are practical concerns as well, such as that women seem to not desire office as much as is thought. The Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (PCUSA) greatly wishes to achieve a version of equality which includes parity in the numbers of men and women leaders. But their report upon the matter, Gender and Leadership in the PC(USA), says women are underrepresented, accounting for 58% of members and only 38% of active teaching elders in 2016, even after generations of ordaining women. Perhaps the familiar refrain that women are more spiritual than men is false, then, or at least does not have anything to do with their desire to hold church office.

(And as an aside, the picture of the PCUSA’s efforts at gender equality that report portrays does not suggest an equitable or pleasant outcome, but rather a situation characterized by widespread, continuing discord. Either extending office to women has not meant them also achieving the same prestige as their male counterparts, or else such as has been achieved is deemed insufficient. Neither suggests the experiment has been particularly successful: either official equality did not mean actual/practical equality, or else equality really has been achieved and its beneficiaries do not like its true nature in comparison to what their ideal visions imagine it should be like.)

Then there is the practical concern that the churches that have ordained women as pastors, far from increasing their appeal, have been struggling with severe membership losses. That which was supposed to increase ministerial effectiveness has not done so, at least for many of the major denominations that have pursued it. The PCUSA’s constituent predecessors had about 4.25 million members in 1965. It is now down to 1.14 million, and loses about 110 churches and 50,000 members every year. The national population has meanwhile increased from about 195 million to an estimated 334 million. This represents the PCUSA’s percentage of the population dropping by about 85%. That is not winning the culture, and represents demographic difficulties reminiscent of the Jewish nation during its judgments (Jer. 4:26).

But lay aside the practical consequences of ordaining women pastors, as well as its obvious violation of the clear commands of Scripture, for these objections have often been pointed out before. Consider again the idea upon which it precedes, this notion that it is unfair to deny office on account of things outside the conscious control of those that want it if they have the same abilities or moral character that others who attain to it possess. It would be easy to imagine that God is unjust on this point and to ask: why, when all believers participate in the Spirit and receive understanding and spiritual gifts from him, has he not seen fit to enable all people, men and women, to be fit for all the duties and offices of the church?

Because God is sovereign, and his will is independent of ours. He does not rule to do our bidding (Lk. 17:7-10) or to bring about perfect equality of authority (1 Pet. 5:5) and opportunity (Matt. 19:30) between people, nor to make it so our faith is easily palatable to unbelievers who ascribe to the phantasm of absolute individual autonomy (1 Cor. 1:23; 1 Pet. 2:8). The church belongs to him, not us, as do its offices and gifts: he may give them in whatever amount he wishes to whomever he wishes, and he may deny or withdraw them as he sees fit. They are his to do with them as he pleases.

We cannot say this is unfair because 1) we are creatures, and creatures have no right to criticize or question their creator (Job. 40:2; Isa. 45:9-11; Rom. 9:20); and 2) none of us deserve anything from God except rejection and punishment (Rom. 3:9-20). All we have is a gift (Jn. 3:27; 1 Cor. 4:7; Jas. 1:17), and gifts are matters of grace, not justice (Matt. 20:1-16; Rom. 12:6). For his own reasons God has given office and gifts to some (Eph. 4:7-14) which he has not given to most others (inc. the present author). That is his prerogative, and you can either accept it or rebel against it. You cannot deny God’s rights to freely do with his own whatever he wills, for that is to deny his independence and sovereignty as creator and governor of the world.

And in that is seen the essential evil of rebelling against him by disobeying his commands against women pastors. It is an act of gross impiety that denies essential attributes of his character and seeks to supplant his will with that of mere sinful humans. Now God says in his word that “rebellion is as the sin of divination, and presumption is as iniquity and idolatry” (1 Sam. 15:23). He forbade such offenses absolutely in the Law, prescribing the death penalty as punishment (Lev. 20:27; Deut. 13:1-18), and in the New Testament says that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of heaven (1 Cor. 6:9; Gal. 5:19-21) but will perish in the lake of fire (Rev. 21:8). Let the gravity of that sink in: those that ordain women are engaged in a sin that God regards as the moral equivalent of idolatry and witchcraft (as some translations have 1 Sam. 15:23’s “divination”). If something is the equivalent of such heinous sins we should not toy with or study it, but rather reject it outright without delay.

That may yet be a snare for many, for I fear that some are content to oppose it, but with a manner and conception that is at least partly of their own choosing and not with the full force of Scripture’s denunciations of such open rebellion. There is a brand of conservative thought that desires to oppose what it regards as error, but in a respectable – dare I say, winsome – way that it (vainly) hopes will not be open to the accusation of fanaticism or fundamentalism. But in such matters we ought to oppose wrong in God’s way, not our own, which means describing sins as they truly are, not in a purposefully restrained manner that fears lest it seem too harsh or offensive. The future will reveal whether the opponents of this error oppose it as though it is a matter of life and death, or whether like Joash they fight with less zeal than is required and ultimately fail (2 Kgs. 13:14-19).

Tom Hervey is a member of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church, Five Forks (Simpsonville), SC. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not of necessity reflect those of his church or its leadership or other members. He welcomes comments at the email address provided with his name. He is also author of Reflections on the Word: Essays in Protestant Scriptural Contemplation, available through Amazon.

[1]      When all specialties were opened to women in 2015 it was on condition that they be able to meet the standards required for each, which suggests that my perspective here is false, as doing so expanded the available candidates to fill combat positions. I.e., it put the military’s needs first and without compromise. However, there are no shortage of men who could fill those positions – the vast bulk of the military serve in administrative and support capacities – and many of the people who pressured the military to make such changes seem to have been motivated less by a desire to expand our combat forces than by concerns about perceived fairness to women.

[2]      The manuscript has a tear where the text in brackets is located above, and the words “done” and “meeting” have been inferred as the proper ones from the context.