Why Do We Not Ordain Women?
We in the LCMS - and other conservative church bodies - insist on the traditional practice of male-only ordination.
There are three explanations for this, moving from right, to moderate, to left:
1) The prohibition is biblical and not optional.
2) The prohibition is an adiaphoron. It is not a biblical command of God, but is a permissible “policy decision” that we are free to change in the future.
3) The prohibition is unbiblical and unjust.
It seems that the LCMS does not speak with complete consistency and clarity to this issue. For while, on the one hand, the synod is officially on record with the prohibition being biblical and not optional, it is also true that denying this publicly is apparently not a cause for removal from the roster of the LCMS - both for pastors and lay church workers.
Why not?
We would (I would hope anyway) remove pastors and other church workers who deny other biblical doctrines, such as the Trinity, the two natures of Christ, the virgin birth, the atonement, and the resurrection. While dissent on these issues is allowed in some other church bodies, as these doctrines are often considered “open questions,” the LCMS (and other conservative Lutheran bodies) see these teachings as biblical, binding, and non-negotiable. This is also true for the confession of baptismal regeneration and the Real Presence in the Sacrament of the Altar.
But it seems that in the LCMS, we sometimes say one thing, and do another.
For if we permit both the prohibition, and the teaching that it isn’t a prohibition, this seems to suggest that we actually believe it is more of an adiaphoron than a dogma. And if it is merely an adiaphoron, just a matter of preference and policy, we are just one step away from declaring the “policy” to be unjust, and overturning it - as we have seen in the ELCA, and in the LCA.
Many years ago at a district convention, the issue of our district entering “partner” status with a foreign church body that “ordained” (and continues to “ordain”) women, came up - and a discussion ensued. A female delegate argued that women’s “ordination” was no impediment to fellowship with another church body, since it’s just our policy in the LCMS, and we could choose to change the policy if we wanted to. The district president (not the current one) was chairing the meeting. As the overseer of doctrine in our district, in my opinion, he should have recused himself from the chair in order to offer a point of information that the delegate was factually wrong, that we in the LCMS don’t prohibit women’s ordination based on policy, but rather based on the Word of God.
But he didn’t.
The best construction is that since he was chairing the meeting, he merely wanted to keep the debate flowing. That said, in our district, a retired pastor and his rostered wife recently left the LCMS for the greener (or should I say, more psychedelic) pastures of the Episcopal Church (sic). During their long tenure in our district, the rostered wife was openly president of an organization dedicated to women’s “ordination” in the LCMS. We also had another pastor in our district (now retired) who had tried to fenagle a lady church worker into the pulpit (not to mention to legitimize homosexual “marriage”).
I recently ran across an LCMS rostered (but not called) lady DCE who said, as a consequence of her reading a pro-women’s ordination book:
I am wishing I did a more thorough study of church history rather than believing that I was being taught all significant history within my own denomination.
She cited the following from the not-yet released book Becoming the Pastor’s Wife: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman’s Path to Ministry by a Baptist lady named Beth Allison Barr:
Some of you will find hard to believe that there was a time in church history when women were ordained to ecclesiastical offices and fulfilled the function of pastors. The historical truth is that they did. Until the rules changed.
This suggests that the correct view of women’s “ordination” is that it is biblical, and that our prohibition of it in the LCMS is merely a preference of policy, nothing more than a matter of arbitrary “rules.” If this rostered lady is not corrected, and publicly so, by her district president, this could give the impression that he is in tacit agreement with her - even if that is not the case.
Another thing that I have noticed of late is speaking about our need to have more “people” (not “men”) serving as pastors. And while it is true that men are people, the lack of clarity by avoiding the word “men” can give an ambiguous (which is to say, an unclear) confession. This is a big red flag, and I would encourage the use of “men” in such situations in order to avoid muddying the waters. As the late Rev. Dr. Kenneth Korby said, “God ordains men. Be one.” Or as our own Rev. Dr. Burnell Eckardt recently counseled seminarians: “Show yourself a man.”
I believe that we need our presidents and praesidium, our pastors, and our lay rostered church workers to be clear in their confession. If we do indeed prohibit women from serving in the pastoral office because it is the Word of God, we should not give the impression that we are hedging our bets, tolerant of “different voices.” In matters of biblical confession, let us confess clearly and unequivocally, “Thus saith the Lord” with one voice and one confession.