Nicholas Wolterstorff
In Support of the Decision of the ICS Board of Trustees to Discontinue the Status of ICS as a Denominationally-Related Educational Institution of the CRCNA
It is with evident regret that the board of ICS has decided to discontinue its current status with respect to the Christian Reformed Church in North America. I share that regret, and honor the board for its decision.
I write as one who knows ICS well. I have, several times, taught courses at ICS jointly with members of the staff. I have attended and participated in a good many ICS-sponsored seminars and colloquia. I have served two terms on its Board of Trustees. On a few occasions, I have given public talks in which I defended ICS against what I judged to be unfair attacks. I have been warm friends with several of its staff.
ICS was given birth in the mid-60s by members of the Christian Reformed Church – more particularly, by members of the church who identified themselves as belonging to the neo-Calvinist strand within the CRC. Prominent among its founders were recent immigrants to Canada from the Netherlands who had been reared in the neo-Calvinist tradition in the country of its origins.
Over the years of its existence, ICS has reflected what was best in the CRC of those days. Some years ago, a professor from Princeton Seminary was visiting me when the synod of the CRC happened to be in session. We decided to attend one of the sessions that was open to the public. I shall never forget my friend’s response. He was taken aback. What he had witnessed, he remarked, was a genuinely theological discussion in which the participants respectfully discussed issues on which they disagreed, without any pressure to rush to a conclusion. He had never seen anything like it in a church assembly. In the assemblies of his own denomination, discussions were political, he said, not theological.
He was right about what he had observed. In my lifetime, the synods of the CRC have held discussions, stretching over many years, about a good number of highly controversial issues: about so-called worldly amusements, about the nature of biblical authority, about divorce and church membership, about the ordination of women, and more. The discussions were, indeed, theological – and biblical. Participants listened to each other respectfully. There was no attempt to shut anyone down, and no attempt to rush to conclusions.
As suggested above, ICS has reflected this denominational ethos in its own ethos. In its letter, the Board writes: “ICS has a long and cherished history of … facilitating difficult, respectful, and safe conversations about controversial matters.” Those words describe exactly what I have experienced in my interactions over the years with ICS: a history of offering a place where “disagreements can take place in a spirit of communal fellowship and solidarity.”
Someone reading these words, but not knowing ICS personally, might conclude that ICS has lurched into theological liberalism, open to each and every wind of doctrine. Nothing of the sort is the case. Not only does ICS remain firmly embedded in the neo-Calvinist tradition, it takes the authority of Scripture seriously while asking how we are to understand that authority. When Paul writes that women are not to speak in the assemblies, nor to have authority over men, how are we to understand that? Are we to understand that as God speaking through Paul for all times and all places? Or are we to understand that as Paul declaring what God required in Paul’s own time and place? Henk Hart’s Setting our Sights by the Morning Star: Reflections on the Role of the Bible in Post-Modern Times, published in 1989, is an excellent discourse on how to submit faithfully to the authority of scripture in situations that the biblical writers did not anticipate.
The Christian Reformed Church today is no longer the church that gave birth to ICS in the mid-60s. The synod of 2016 appointed a committee with the mandate to compose a report on the biblical understanding of human sexuality, to be presented to a subsequent synod, and it stipulated that only those who agreed in advance that scripture condemns same-sex relations were eligible for membership on the committee. Thereby, of course, it forestalled all discussion of the issue by the committee. The committee presented its report to the CRC synod of 2021.
Brushing aside alternative views developed by biblically faithful Christians, the report declared it to be the “clear” teaching of scripture that all same-sex relations are condemned by God – which implies, presumably, that those who disagree are either obtuse or perverse; obtuse, if we fail to discern what is clear; perverse, if we do discern that it is clear, but refuse to acknowledge that we do. The report further recommended that synod declare this to have status confessionis in the Christian Reformed Church.
The recommendations of the report were accepted by the synod of 2021 and affirmed by each subsequent synod. There was, of course, no open theological or biblical discussion of the issue at any of these synods. How could there be? When synod, following the recommendation of the report, declared it to be the clear teaching of scripture that same-sex relations are condemned always and everywhere, and resolved that this should have confessional status in the CRC, how could there be open discussion of the issue?
The ICS Board writes, “We found our hearts broken as we watched and listened to the several synods of the CRCNA.” As a lifelong member of the CRCNA, and as one who has loyally served the denomination in a number of capacities, my heart was likewise broken. The ICS board writes that by giving their interpretation of scripture confessional status in the CRCNA, these synods have “effectively expell[ed] all those whose Christian consciences call them to dissent.” I am among those who have been expelled.
The denomination that gave birth to ICS no longer exists. The Christian Reformed Church that now exists resembles the denomination that my friend described as his own. There is no genuine and open theological discussion. It’s all political, all about gaining victory for one’s own party. Meanwhile, ICS has remained true to its origins. If you want to see, on a small scale, what assemblies of the CRC were once like, attend a seminar or conference of ICS.
If ICS is to continue to be true to its origins and history, and if, in the words of the Board, it is to continue to offer a place where “Christians can, in good faith, disagree about matters of scriptural interpretation or about where the Holy Spirit is leading the Church today,” then it has no choice but, with deep regret, to break off its relation to the CRCNA as it exists today. It cannot, with integrity, do otherwise.
My hope is that the action of ICS, and the writing, by myself and others, in support of that action, will stimulate the sort of discussion that the CRCNA has tried to shut down, of how to embrace in love those who find themselves to be LGBTQ+ persons.
Nicholas Wolterstorff
Noah Porter Professor Emeritus of Philosophical Theology, Yale University
Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, University of Virginia
Formerly, Professor of Philosophy, Calvin College (now University)
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course: Gender, Sexuality, and the Bible
professor: Dr. Sylvia Keesmaat
term: Fall 2025
format: online, synchronous
structure: eight two-hour sessions in the evenings
description:
The Bible has been increasingly used as a weapon in debates about sexuality and gender in the church and in popular culture. This course will focus on the use of the Bible in one recent denominational context (the Human Sexuality Report [HSR] of the Christian Reformed Church), along with other scholarly writings from the Reformed tradition and beyond, to explore the various ways that the Bible has been interpreted with regard to questions related to sexuality and gender. Attention to questions of hermeneutical context as well as the Ancient Near Eastern and Greco-Roman context of the biblical text will provide a lens for engaging with this topic in a way which reflects the generous, welcoming, and redemptive character of the God we find in the biblical story.