The Great Commission and the Ordination of Women

Evidently the Southern Baptists are still trying valiantly to hold the line against the ordination of women. The latest has been the expulsion of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California, where Rick Warren took the brazen step of ordaining three women, in direct opposition to the Southern Baptist’s declaration, “While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by scripture.” Warren’s response to the expulsion was to take to Tweet, “Friends worldwide: I’m so touched by your love! Kay and I love you back!” Whether that’s meant sarcastically for the leadership or as a thank you toward those who have reached out to them since their expulsion is unclear. What is clear is that Warren, who had previously opposed women’s ordination, changed his mind. And the reason, he said, is not that he had been “caving in to culture . . . becoming a liberal.” Rather, it’s because of the Great Commission. Here’s his view of Matthew 28:18:

There are four verbs in the Great Commission: go, make disciples, baptise and teach. Men and women are to do all four things. Women are to go, women are to make disciples. Women are to baptise and women are to teach. You can’t say: “Well, the first two are for men and women, but the second two are only for men.” The Great Commission was given to every person; not just men and not just ordained people.

So here’s a guy who claims he believes the Bible saying he’s convinced by the Bible that women should be ordained. The Southern Baptist Convention disagrees, and so far have held sway, but some pretty powerful voices are convincing a great number of people that the ordination of women is the right way to go.

And that kind of logic ought to make Missouri Synod Lutherans sit up and take notice.  

Because the very same kind of language has been central to Missouri Synod thinking for some time now. The Great Commission has for years been a kind of shibboleth for the Missouri Synod. It’s a trump card in debates; it overrides reasoned arguments and is almost ubiquitous in congregational statements about who they are. Virtually everybody bows and scrapes to the Great Commission.

And the Great Commission itself is almost universally misunderstood and misapplied in the Missouri Synod, in pretty much the same way as Rick Warren has done.

Warren’s fatal error is in his first assumption. The Great Commission was not given to every person. It was given to the Apostles. There was no multitude, no assembly of Christians. Not even the Blessed Virgin was present on the mountain where Jesus gave it. Only “the eleven disciples.” Strictly speaking, this is about His authority: “all power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore . . .” He makes these specific disciples His sent ones, His Apostles, fully enduing them with His own authority. Specifically, His authority to teach, as He says here. And in that He says “lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world,” He clearly means that this teaching office and authority will continue through the ones they will ordain after them, and so also until the end of the world.

And so they themselves rightly determined, or rather assumed, that the ones they will ordain must be men like themselves, as the leadership of Israel were throughout history, going right back to the Creation, when God made Adam first, and then Eve out of his side. Since Christ also is male, being the Second Adam, any personal representative of Him could hardly be female, because that’s simply not the way things were made. Accordingly, St. Peter’s first requirement for a replacement for Judas was that it be a male: “Wherefore of these men (ανδρων) which have companied with us . . .” (Acts 1:21).

This interpretation is of course fully consistent with St. Paul’s strict proscription: “I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence” (I Tim. 2:12). Warren’s interpretation says nothing at all about the Pauline proscription, and not surprisingly, because it’s in direct contradiction to what he says.

But it doesn’t matter, because Warren played the trump card.

All this is recounted here to demonstrate how very vulnerable we have become in our own churches to similar forays of faulty logic.

Let the Great Commission govern everything, and soon you’ll find yourself ordaining women. Just follow Warren’s logic. It’s only a matter of time.