I am grateful for Peter Van Doodewaard's continued interaction on important topics that impact the life of our church.[1] And I rejoice that he, as I expected, whole-heartedly echoes Machen's endorsement of the "noble tradition of the Reformed faith." Yet, even though the two of us have engaged in some email discussion, crucial differences in perspective remain. The Orthodox Presbyterian Church faces issues, I believe, which new fundamentalism finds itself inadequate to address properly. These are matters with which our church needs to continue to wrestle. She faces a danger of drifting into an unbiblical progressivism on one side and of being enticed into political activism on the other -- both of which would take her eyes off her Lord and the work he has given her to do as the church. In what follows, I use identifying names as infrequently as possible, seeking to walk in the steps of one of the better traditions of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, that of having vigorous discussion of vital issues while focusing on the ideas rather than personalities.
Peter Van Doodewaard's "About Machen and New Fundamentalism" describes "the Holy Spirit's regular, repeated, positive and exemplary use of the word patriarch." The New Testament uses the word only four times. Is that enough to be "regular" and "repeated"? The term is used positively in Acts 2:29 and in Hebrews 7:4. But Stephen's use (twice) in Acts 7:8-9 describes the patriarchs jealously selling their brother as a slave, hardly either positive or exemplary. Stephen's point is that the patriarchs, like the other forefathers mentioned in his message, rebelled against God, persecuting the righteous, just as his audience had betrayed and murdered the Righteous One. The New Testament does not summon us to emulate the patriarchs. Rather, it calls us to trust our covenantally faithful God who comes to us in Jesus Christ, and then to walk in his ways. The Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments teach husbands to love their wives and fathers to nurture their children in the fear of the Lord, but do not tell them that they have to become patriarchs to do so.
The article "In Defense of Patriarchy" states, "Patriarchy simply means father-rule."[2] The Arndt and Gingrich lexicon, however, translates the Greek word as "father of a nation, patriarch." The focus in the New Testament usage is on ancestry, those with whom God made his covenant promises, rather than on rule. I have no problem using the word patriarch in the way that Scripture does. Recently I preached on Genesis 28. The gist of the message was not to point to the patriarch (with his head on a stone at the bottom of the ladder) as an example, but rather to focus on the One at the top of the ladder, making promises of salvation to his people (see John 1:51).
Peter Van Doodewaard's "In Defense of Patriarchy" pictures a home in which biblical fatherhood is "strong, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in mercy and forgiveness, and holy." The patriarchy I have encountered in my denomination is less benign. "About Machen and New Fundamentalism" suggests that I should have cited examples of new fundamentalists in our church who embrace patriarchy and show a less than faithful following of Scripture.
To the degree that I had individuals in mind as I wrote about patriarchy, I was thinking, not of my respondent, but of a couple of younger ministers in our church, both of whom identified as patriarchal, and their respective presbyteries. Both made demeaning comments about a female member of the church. In posts online, both described women as ontologically inferior to men. One posted on social media using violent language (which he later said was joking and unclear) towards women and engaged in cursing on one occasion. One is still a minister in good standing. I could go into more detail about the arrest of the other and his eventual removal from the ministry, but this is not the appropriate forum for that.
I expect that the author of "In Defense of Patriarchy" would condemn some of the above and describe it as "not-patriarchy."[3] Nevertheless, I still believe that my church has a problem with patriarchy. The issue is not only the positions taken by two young ministers but also the oversight (or lack thereof) by the presbyteries that ordained them.
Given the examples above, as well as other situations which cannot be discussed now, I fail to share my respondent's confidence: "I can't think of a single pastor or elder in the OPC who cannot recognize 'that abuse can be multi-faceted and can occur within the church and her families.'"[4] His article expressed the fear that the overture to the Eighty-Eighth General Assembly "permits the neo-Marxist idea that abuse is fundamentally an imbalance of power." Obviously, it would be difficult to quantify, but I suspect that in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church the set of neo-Marxists defining abuse as an imbalance of power is most likely considerably smaller than the set of men, and some women, who engage in oppressive (to use the biblical term) or abusive conduct towards others in the family or church.
The expressed concern about "imbalance of power" is worth further discussion. Ground 1 of Overture 2 to the Assembly spoke of "misuse of power of various kinds."[5] The Scriptures do not oppose an imbalance of power, but our God roundly condemns the misuse (or abuse) of power. He is the God who defends the widows and orphans. Writings about abuse in our circles tend to take pains to define abuse in biblical language, not simply to adopt what may be seen as politically correct. To identify concern about the misuse of power with a neo-Marxist idea that abuse is an imbalance of power, strikes me as a scare tactic that failed to take the overture on its own terms.
Those who modified the mandate of the committee were opposing, not a committee report on abuse that they thought was contaminated by neo-Marxism, but a request to set up a committee to study abuse and equip officers of the church. The potential of the concept of abuse being corrupted was enough to eliminate the term from the mandate. The minority of Advisory Committee 4 warned against adopting the overture, in part because, "Not all actions referred to as abuse are actually sin" (Art. 146). This modification was a preemptive action which, I believe, seriously weakened the church's response to a serious problem.
Old fundamentalism guarded the law by such things as requiring abstinence in order to avoid drunkenness. For the non-fundamentalists, giving up a glass of wine at dinner for the sake of peace with a weaker brother may have been a small price to pay. When neo-fundamentalism makes it more difficult to recognize and report abuse, the price is not simply a glass of wine, but possibly the safety and well-being of sisters and brothers. We need to think seriously about that cost.
The request to the Assembly was to form a committee to "collect, study, and develop resources on topics related to the many forms of abuse that manifest themselves in the church (sexual, domestic, ecclesiastical, verbal, emotional, psychological, etc.)." The mandate adopted instead by the Assembly was to "collect, study, and develop resources to equip the officers of the church to protect her members from sexual predators and domestic violence."[6] While we clearly want to protect against sexual predators and domestic violence, notice what the changed mandate leaves out. No longer are we looking to help officers recognize and protect against ecclesiastical, verbal, emotional, and psychological abuse. Serious oppression can take place, both in families and in the church, in ways that fall short of domestic violence. There are large areas of sinful harm that fall outside of sexual predation and domestic violence. I am thinking of a spouse verbally demeaning and threatening his or her partner. I am thinking of a husband failing to provide essential basics for his wife and children while he spends his money on his own sinful habits. I am thinking of a father using dehumanizing language towards his children. The list could go on. Also eliminated by the revised mandate was the phrase, "in the church." That phrase would have alerted us to the fact that oppressive conduct can be found in the church as well as in families -- but the phrase was removed. If we remove substantial forms of abuse from what we are looking for, we are far less likely to recognize them or to be receptive, as officers serving the flock, to receive reports of harm and to protect effectively those entrusted to our care. We do well to remember that, as Michael Kruger points out, "Not everything is abuse."[7] We need to evaluate what we hear. But we also need to be careful not to minimize or avoid recognizing the sins of oppression. We do have a problem in dealing with abuse, in my observation.
Old fundamentalism was narrower than Scripture in the use of beverage alcohol, among other areas. In opposing the very real sin of drunkenness, it advocated total abstinence. Likewise, the newer fundamentalism can be narrower than Scripture in its treatment of women. The Ninetieth General Assembly decided a case against allowing a woman to lead in studies and groups which included both women and men outside of worship services. The case did not involve ordination of women to special office nor their leading in worship. The same Assembly spent considerable time debating whether the office of Statistician, which for many years had been filled by a man who did not hold ordained office, could be held by a female member of the OPC, before deciding that ordinarily it ought to be held by an ordained officer. At times we seem to be so determined to be diametrically opposed to humanistic feminism that we make "womanhood more of a yoke than a privilege."[8]
"About Machen and New Fundamentalism" notes that Advisory Committee 9 of the Fifty-Fifth General Assembly expressed concern with the report on "Women in Church Office." The advisory committee stated, "The report in its interpretation of 1 Corinthians 11:2-16, l Corinthians 14:33b-36, and 1 Timothy 2:8-15 does not give clear expression to the historic interpretation, that Paul is saying that women, as women, should be 'silent' in worship in the assembly of God's people." Perhaps one reason that the Assembly rejected the language of the advisory committee is that the study committee report gave careful, exegetical attention to the "silence" of women in church services.[9] The need for us to be cautious about assuming that Paul's comment about silence is support for whatever happens to be our own notion of what that means is illustrated by an incident a pastor friend of mine recalled. He was in a group in which several pastors affirmed that the women were silent in the churches they served. My friend quietly suggested (and I am paraphrasing): "In the church I serve, we like it when the women join in confessing the Apostles' Creed. [pause] We encourage them to participate in the responsive reading. [pause] And we like it when they sing the hymns!"
Perhaps a source of our problem in this area rises out of starting our discussions of men and women in marriage and in the church with the issue of authority, rather than beginning, as Scripture does, with them both being created as image of God. "In Defense of Patriarchy" emphasizes father rule. We need to beware, not only of a Marxist mentality, but also of a lingering influence of Aristotle's view that women are inferior to men. God has ordained real authority in the state, in the church, and in the home. Scripture teaches that, and the church must maintain it. But it is easy to forget that godly authority is exercised in service, as our Lord reminds us in Mark 10:45. He says that the seeking of authority is pagan, something that the Gentiles seek.
The concluding section of "About Machen and New Fundamentalism" expresses a deep concern: "History bears witness that political pressures have regularly pulled Reformed denominations to the side of progressivism, and that reliably under the banner of resisting fundamentalism" (emphasis original). I share that concern. But I am also concerned that the church faces pressures to pull it into a (so-called) conservative political activism on the right. Error in either direction threatens to take our eyes off the Savior and his kingdom. There can be a social gospel of the right as well as of the left. We must resist both.
I continue to hope that all of us in the church set our course, not first of all by asking what the world is doing and then reacting, but by making sure that our direction is grounded in and guided by the Word. All Scripture is profitable, and it speaks to all of life. I am confident that my respondent shares that conviction.
"About Machen and New Fundamentalism" refers to Fosdick's 1922 sermon "Shall the Fundamentalists Win?" and suggests that Machen embraced an admittedly ill-fitting mantle of "fundamentalist" and simply said, "Yes, we shall." (I take this as the author's summary of Machen's position, not claiming an actual quote of Machen.) Machen actually responded, I believe, not by promoting some kind of fundamentalism, though he was certainly willing to work with fundamentalists in opposing liberalism, but by publishing in 1923 his Christianity and Liberalism. It is not fundamentalism, old or new, that best counters theological liberalism, Marxism, political activism of the left or right, or abusive conduct, but rather the full-orbed, confessional Reformed faith, continuing to subject itself to Scripture. Both Van Doodewaard and I are thankful to have been reared in that faith, and our church needs to continue in that path.
[2] Peter C. Van Doodewaard, "In Defense of Patriarchy," Reformation21, February 5, 2024, https://www.reformation21.org/blog/in-defense-of-patriarchy.
[7] Michael J. Kruger, Bully Pulpit: Confronting the Problem of Spiritual Abuse in the Church (Zondervan Reflective, 2022), 35-39. For an excellent review of the book see New Horizons in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (May 2023): 20, (https://opc.org/new_horizons/NH2023/NH2023May.pdf).
[8] "Report of the Committee on Women in Church Office," https://www.opc.org/GA/women_in_office.html.