Confessions of a Lutheran Refugee

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (as you doubtless know) decided, last month, to bless same-sex relationships, and to allow open homosexuals (if monogamous) to serve as clergy. I'm sure this action will lead to a perceptible (possibly dramatic) exodus of conservative churches and individuals from the denomination. I approve of this, and encourage it.

 Still, I can already hear the accusations coming from the ELCA liberals and homosexual activists—“This isn’t about truth! It’s about hate! You people just can’t get past your homophobia!”

 And in a sense, I understand the criticism. One might reasonably ask, “Why now? Has this problem come up all of a sudden (like the unpredicted tornado that knocked the cross off the steeple of Central Lutheran Church, a convention venue, during deliberations)? Why strain out this camel, when you’ve swallowed so many camels already?”

 The church I grew up in was part of the old Evangelical Lutheran Church, which got folded into the American Lutheran Church through a merger in 1960. I attended ALC colleges, and eventually went to work at church headquarters in Minneapolis, in shipping and mailing for several years, and finally as Administrative Assistant to the speaker on the “Lutheran Vespers” radio program, for a short time in 1979.

 It was during this same period, in 1970, that the ALC voted to ordain women as pastors. For me, it was clear that the ALC had set the plain teaching of Scripture aside, and I made the decision that I would never again be a member of an ALC church. I saw the denominational action as “a cloud no bigger than a man’s hand,” and the sequel seemed obvious (and unfolded pretty much as I expected). This conviction put me in the odd position of working for a church that I considered not (yet) heretical, but prodigal.

 At some point during those years, I was persuaded to read a book on Christian feminism, which convinced me that I’d been wrong about women’s ordination. That conviction lasted right up until my next reading of the Epistles. My personal experience has been that it’s possible to believe in the ordination of women, but not while reading the New Testament. One can maintain Christian feminism, or one can maintain the authority of Scripture. Not both at once. At least I can’t. The ALC’s working principle, which I heard repeated often during my years at headquarters, was “We believe that the Bible is the final word in all matters of faith and life.” It was clear to me, for one, that that formula had been emptied of meaning.

 In the years that followed, my personal relationship to the ALC was problematic, and not always in ways that redounded to my credit. I was mostly an unchurched believer, seduced by my loner nature into staying home on Sundays. I felt that my proper home was the ALC, but that ALC membership would do injury to my conscience. At one point I joined a (very conservative) church of Lutheran Church in America, which was completely inconsistent, as they'd ordained women before the ALC did. I will stipulate to that hypocrisy on my part, for the record.

 The situation didn’t improve when I went to work as Administrative Assistant for an ALC church in Florida. I attended that church for several years, but refused to join. After the 1988 merger that created the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, I found a congregation of the Association of Free Lutheran Congregations, which I joined. Today I work for the AFLC’s schools, and have a spiritual home.

 Developments within the ELCA over the years have never once surprised me. That the denomination would pay for abortions through its health benefits program followed naturally from its preference for the socially acceptable over the scriptural. The “Called to Common Mission” agreement of 1999, which established pulpit and altar fellowship with the even more liberal Episcopal Church (through the complete jettisoning of Luther’s definition of the nature of the Church) was a foregone conclusion. Why would abandoning Luther be any roadblock to those who’d already abandoned the Bible (the recently adjourned ELCA assembly also approved, with less publicity than attended the “gay” decisions, a similar arrangement with the United Methodist Church, thus ash-canning Luther’s teaching on Holy Communion)? When an ELCA seminarian (not especially conservative by my standards) told me that he was one of a very small minority in his class who were not universalists, it was no news to me. The ordination of women telegraphed it all, way back in 1970.

 The point of all this is that, in my opinion, a lot of people who seem shocked, shocked by the ELCA’s abandonment of biblical principles have simply had their heads in the clouds for the past forty years. There are varieties of ministries and varieties of callings, and I’d never suggest that those who’ve stayed in the ALC and ELCA to fight the good fight were doing wrong. But those who think that the ELCA has suddenly gone off the rails are mistaken. It, and its predecessors, have been straying like lost sheep all through my lifetime, and I’m no young man anymore.

Comments

[Carl]

Lars,
Great post! May I have your permission to copy and distribute to my bible class? Btw, if someone should ask, how old are you?

Thanks!

[Lars Walker]

Yes, you have permission. And I'm 59.

[Carl]

Thanks! That's not young, but not really old these days!

[Truth Unites... and Divides]

A great post indeed, Lars.

I'm glad that you saw WO (Women's Ordination) as being an overt, blatant, visible breaking point with the Authority of Scripture. That is to say that while there were other steps prior to WO that were aberrant, it was WO that really crystallized the departure from the Authority of Scripture.

FWIW, I've composed two aphorisms regarding this issue:

"Woe is what you reap
when what you sow
is WO."

"If WO, then GO.
No WO, no GO."

(WO = Women's Ordination. GO = Gay Ordination.)

[Emil]

Interesting comment. My wife and I are in a conservative presbyterian church which does not ordain women. My wife tells me that the Greek, go and preach, includes women. She also deals with the Greek in other passages.

I found it odd when visiting a sister congregation of our congregation that a woman social worker who counsels drug abusers was to lead an adult class on treating drug abuse made up of men and women. It was pointed out that this would be OK because her husband would be present. Although he knew nothing about drug abuse, I suppose he could approve what she said so her leadership would be acceptable. This kinda bothered me.

I mention this because I find a distinction between what Paul wrote about homosexuality and women's role. In the case of women's role, I think he was trying to avoid making it difficult for men in the male-dominated culture to entertain Christianity----thus with this he make a compromise with the culture. He was NOT following the culture. He clearly was against the culture. A woman was mentioned as an "apostle" by Paul and at least one woman was called a prophetess in the OT. Given how women were treated in the culture both would have been quite unusual.

In the case of homosexuality he was clearly against the culture again. Homosexuality was widespread and widely accepted; Greek history is clear. One cannot work with the NT Greek and find any angle to say that Paul would have said it was OK.

My point is that coupling the ordination of women with the ordination of homosexuals skips over some distinctions. What do you think?

[Lars Walker]

It seems to me that, if Paul was in favor of female leadership in the churches, he sure had a funny way of promoting it.

[Extollager]

Emil,

Clearly women are not to be ordained. There are three ways that the Bible's opposition to something can be shown, and all three of them here.

1.By express prohibition: Women are not to teach the congregation (=preach), nor to have authority over men but to be silent in the church; this is rooted in the order of nature (1 Timothy 211ff.) Pastors do have authority over men, who are to obey them (Hebrews 13:17 clearly refers to pastors); since women are not to have authority over men, women are not to be pastors. Ordaining women can be done only at the cost of violation of Scripture.

2.By example: Jesus chose only men as His disciples, sent only men to preach the Gospel, cast out demons, etc. There are no female ordinations to the pastorate in the New Testament. (This is not to say women can't be deaconesses with duties of service in the Church that do not conflict with Scripture.) We mustn't be "smarter than Jesus."

3.By implication: "A bishop must be above reproach, the husband of one wife," etc. (1 Timothy 3:2). It's clearly implied here that an "overseer" (=episkopos, bishop; in the NT era, the later distinction between pastor/priest and bishop had not arisen) in the Church can't be a woman (and, despite the ELCA, a pastor can't be a man in a sexual relationship with another man).

So, again, there are three ways that a prohibition can be shown from Scripture, and all three are strong evidence for the historic practice of the Church. (There could be a fourth type of evidence, and that would be if we had an account of a congregation being censured by an apostle for ordaining a woman. But of course no congregation did such a thing.)

It would unbiblical to deny that God gives gifts to women not only for the blessing of their families, neighbors, and friends, but also for the Church; but in affirming that truth, we mustn't encroach upon other truths taught by Scripture.

[Eric Holmer]

Emil,

This book makes a similar point:
http://www.amazon.com/Slaves-Women-Homosexuals-Exploring-Hermeneutics/dp/0830815619

It basically states that both slaves and women are presented in a redemptive light whereas the same cannot bee seen in scripture for homosexuality.

[YaknYeti]

Emil,

I agree with you that the issue of women's roles in the Bible is more nuanced than that of homosexuals. This makes sense; women play a natural role in God's creation, while those who act on homosexual impulses do so in contradiction to God's law and order. In particular, I have trouble taking the injunction from 1 Tim 2 at face value. Neither the Bible nor personal experience agree with the ideas that women should never teach anything to men in church or be in a position with any authority over men. But if you can completely ignore this passage as a "cultural accommodation" by Paul, you can write off the passages condemning homosexual behavior as well. Between Paul's restrictions on women in authority and his asymmetric commands to husbands and wives in marriage, there seems to be some core principle of hierarchy that exists and should be honored.

The easiest answer I've found so far is to go with how the practice developed in the first few centuries of the Church's existence. Only men are ordained to the priesthood, can perform the Eucharist, and can preach the homily associated with the Eucharistic service. (Others more knowledgeable than I are welcome to correct or elaborate upon this.) Women are otherwise allowed to teach and have positions of authority in the church under that structure.

I'm not fully comfortable with this answer because it suggests other conclusions about order in the early church that would make it difficult for me to remain a Lutheran. :-) But I'm still working on that one.

[Truth Unites... and Divides]

With regards to Eric Holmer's comment above,

Please read this review by Thomas Schreiner.

Excerpt from concluding paragraph:

"Nevertheless, Webb’s hermeneutic is
flawed because he fails to grasp precisely
the biblical theological concept of redemptive
history, even though he appeals to it
in presenting his own view. Nor does he
relate well the OT to the NT, faltering
because he does not correlate his view
with the truth that Christ fulfills all of
God’s promises. The definitive and final
character of the NT canon is not properly
integrated into the whole issue of application
by Webb. Hence, he introduces
abstract criteria to discern what is cultural
instead of interpreting the Bible in accord
with its storyline. There are some good
insights in his use of the criteria, but the
criteria he judges to be persuasive are
actually remarkably ambiguous and even
questionable. They do not establish his
conclusion regarding the role of women,
and he fails to employ the argument from
creation sufficiently in his explication of
homosexuality. He does show that the
canon excludes homosexuality. Webb
rightly perceives that slavery is not God’s
ideal, but he could have drawn this conclusion from rightly assessing arguments
from the created order and paying attention
to the warrants (or lack thereof) found
in the NT itself. To sum up, his defense of
egalitarianism is found lacking, for he fails
to establish his case exegetically or hermeneutically."

[William Tighe]

Emil wrote

"A woman was mentioned as an "apostle" by Paul ..."

Not necessarily; she may only have been "well-known to the apostles." See this:

http://www.trushare.com/70MAR01/MR01JUNI.htm

and especially this:

http://touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=21-08-022-f

[c matt]

Given how women were treated in the culture both would have been quite unusual.

Are you saying that female priestesses, prophets and rulers were unknown to Roman and Greek pagans?

[Truth Unites... and Divides]

Oh my goodness!

Professor William Tighe, thanks so much for the link to Professor John Hunwicke's article on trushare about whether Junia was an Apostle. That is a silver bullet that stops dead the egalitarian wolves who continually agitate that Junia was an apostle.

Here's a brief excerpt:

"But not according to the latest number of NewTestament Studies (Vol 47 Number 1 January 2001 pp 76-91) M.H.Brurer and O.B. Wallace, who hail from the Lone Star State, argue the Junia was probably a female, but not an Apostle. This is how it goes. Romans 16.7 calls Andronicus and Junia 'episemoi en tios apostolois - notable in/among the apostles.

Does this mean:
(a) notable members of the group of the apostles; or
(b) not apostles themselves but well known among (i.e. to) the apostles?

(a) is much the more fashionable translation at the moment. Of course , is has its problems. If Andronicus and Junia were 'prominent' members of the apostolic band it is odd that we hear nothing else about them; and odd that Paul, who is probably listing for the Roman Christians people who could put in a good word for him, didn't give them a more prominent billing on the list. So 'Apostles' would have to mean a different, lesser category then the Twelve.

But this is not what Burer and Wallace discuss. They examine what in extant Greek literature (60,000,000 words) the usage episemos en... means And their conclusion is that (b) is right: in other words, Andronicus and Junia were not apostles but were a couple whom the Apostles (i.e. the leaders of the Jerusalem community) knew and - Paul implies - approved of. If Paul had wanted to say 'notable members of the group of the Apostles' he would have used a different construction: episemos with the genitive case: 'episemoi ton apostolon' - well-know of the apostles.

So, oops-a-daisy, there wasn't a woman apostle after all!"

[An Observer]

A much longer and more technical blog posting that reaches essentially the same conclusion as Fr. Hunwicke (in the item posted by William Tighe):

http://bible.org/article/junia-among-apostles-double-identification-problem-romans-167

[Emil]

I take comfort from a comment by (I believe) one of the editors some time ago in Touchstone that those who accept the ordination of women, while not in the inner circle, are not far outside (assuming Nicene Creed faith).

[Truth Unites... and Divides]

Emil: "I take comfort from a comment by (I believe) one of the editors some time ago in Touchstone that those who accept the ordination of women, while not in the inner circle, are not far outside (assuming Nicene Creed faith)."

I'm not sure how anyone could be comforted by knowing that they are "not far outside" of God's clearly revealed will.

[Extollager]

Emil, if you think women should (nowadays) be ordained, what persuades you that women should be ordained despite the evidence that's been offered here? I don't mean that you should give an exhaustive answer, but just something like, "I believe Scriptural revelation is time- and culture-bound and that the Spirit may give subsequent revelations that correct Scripture" or something else.

Or is it just: "I accept that the Scriptures prohibit ordination of women, but I wish they didn't"?

Not to put words in your mouth, but to encourage further discussion.

[MC Moderator]

To the person who has now posted an offensive comment twice, and had it deleted twice, a reminder of the posted ground rules:

"Respect the ecumenical character of this site. Do not deliberately raise or encourage sectarian apologetics or polemics against other denominations. There are other sites for such things."

"Deliberate or repeated defiance of the rules, including reposting of deleted comments, will be grounds for being banned from the site."