Why Don't We Ordain Women?
In his recent poll (which is admittedly not a scientific survey), the Rev. Zach Zehnder claims that we are shockingly united on the issue of male-only ordination. This is based on 85% of respondents saying that women should not be ordained. 10% said that they should. 5% were not sure. Zehnder celebrates this as a great show of unity.
But think about it. The reason we don’t ordain women and have them serve pastorally is because it is doctrine. It is dogma. It’s not just a preference. If he took a poll and asked about the Trinity or the Two Natures of Christ, would he be celebrating the fact that 85% of respondents agreed to these doctrines? Or would he express concern that 15% didn’t?
Moreover, according to the poll numbers, nearly a fourth (23%) of all women who took the poll expressed the belief that women should be ordained. That is shocking disunity. There is good news, however, as among boomers, roughly a quarter of all of them, men and women alike, favor women’s “ordination,” while among the young, there is an overwhelming consensus - about 95% of respondents aged 18-29 - opposed. A good many of our liberals are, to no one’s surprise, « personnes d'un certain âge » . Slightly more than a fourth (26%) of those aged 70 and above, favored women’s “ordination.” For they grew up brainwashed by feminism. Our Gen Z and Gen Alpha folks have seen the destruction of feminism and of liberalism in general. They are lurching back to a more conservative, even a reactionary and traditionalist, Christianity. And this is not only an LCMS trend. It is across Christendom in the West. As the old Rolling Stones hymn puts it: “Time Is On My Side.”
And even among those who answered that they oppose women’s “ordination,” there was no question asking why. I have a suspicion that among those who oppose it, many of them will not say that it is a doctrine, but rather only a preference. Reading between the lines among some of our less traditionalist podcasters, I suspect this to be the case with some of them. They say they oppose women’s “ordination,” but would they still oppose it if it didn’t cause offense and discord? Would they still oppose it if synod approved it?
Why don’t we ordain women? It is not a cultural matter, a preference, or an adiaphoron. It is rather an expression of the order of creation, of the incarnation, and it is spelled out in God’s Word. Moreover, exclusive male-only ordination was also practiced by Jesus and the apostles themselves. Those who want women’s “ordination” have a lot of tricks up their sleeves, including the tried and true: “Did God actually say?” Some of them argue that prohibitions of women in ministry are merely Paul’s personal opinions and biases - not God’s Word. I have even heard Paul condemned as a “misogynist.” Some try to cast doubt on the Pauline authorship of the epistles. Some argue that the prohibitions were culturally and temporally bound. Some run to that old friend of radicals, Gospel Reductionism. Others appeal to reason placed in a magisterial way above the Scriptures. Others say that God is still speaking, and He is giving us new revelations for our day. Others say that it is an adiaphoron, and simply a matter of preference. They want what they want, and they will just go ahead and do it while reverse-engineering a theology to support it. “Any port in a storm.”
One person who used to think in these terms, served as a Lutheran “pastor,” changed her mind, and stepped away from purporting to be in the ministry is a lady named Ulla Hindbeck. She was “ordained” as a “priest” in the (Lutheran) Church of Sweden. By 1991, she had repudiated her “ministry” and wrote about it in the Confessional Lutheran Research Society Newsletter Number 21 (Easter 1991). It was reprinted by Logia in 2000 (Epiphany 2000, Volume IX Number 1). This issue is devoted to Feminism, and can be downloaded for $4.00 here.
Hindbeck concludes:
Our fathers in our apostolic church did not know such a god who calls women into the apostolic office. It is a new god who is worshiped here - woman-god, socialism’s god, a god of human reason, a new god, and a new belief. It is not Christianity but another religion.
Since women pastors are a human order in the church that conflicts with God’s Word, a woman cannot be considered to be among the ungodly pastors, who, thanks be to God’s grace in spite of their ungodliness, administer a valid sacrament. Women do not have the binding and loosing key, and can therefore neither bind nor loose a person in respect to sin. Those who attend the Lord’s Table administered by a woman have not received absolution.
The Lord’s Supper administered by a woman has no blessing. She is not leading people to God, but away from God. The one they are serving in their female-pastoral office is not God, but the devil, antichrist…. A woman pastor’s administration of the sacrament will, therefore, lead people directly to condemnation.
This same issue of Logia from 26 years ago also includes a piece by the Rev. Dr. David Scaer that remains fresh today: “Christology and Feminism.” He wrote:
At this moment the LCMS is discussing the participation of women in the public liturgical functions, as well as some suggested changes in the liturgy and hymns. In so doing we must make sure that we are not blind in claiming that these matters are adiaphora. We Lutherans may have played the adiaphoristic card too often as a convenient way of absolving ourselves from the requirements of difficult questions. The things we may call adiaphora have christological consequences.
What we do reflects what we believe. We fail to see how our practices and doctrines are intimately related to each other. But I assure you that the rest of the theological world does not suffer from this failure. Feminist theology recognizes the profound influence of symbols and makes it their first order of business that the right symbols are in place to convey the right message.
After an analysis of several feminist theologians and how christology shapes their arguments, Scaer concluded:
How we stand on the incarnation must be related to our understanding of ministry. No church can have a feminized clergy and still insist on a masculine Christ. The inconsistency will soon be noticed…. The LCMS remains one of the few Protestant churches of any significance with a recognizable theological position. The Southern Baptists are opposed to the practice as a group, but they have no control over what the individual congregations do…. Only from such a holistic approach that involves a firm commitment to the biblical revelation and to the incarnation of God in Jesus can we come to a complete understanding of what it means to be ministers of the gospel.
I think it would be helpful for pastors and podcasters (and maybe even some District Presidents) to clarify what they believe about male-only ordination. Do they believe it is just a custom that may, or may not, be worth retaining? Do they believe synod has the authority to overturn this prohibition and allow for women to be "ordained”? Or do they believe that male-only ordination is a doctrine, a dogma, an unalterable truth of God’s created order, testified by Holy Scripture?