Peripatetic Pastor

THE COLLAPSE OF AUTHORITY:

NOTES ON THE CRC SYNOD

The real story

The synod of the Christian Reformed Church (CRC) has just completed its work. Synod 2025 was devoted mostly to cleaning up the margins on a series of decisions beginning with Synod 2022—decisions that have fundamentally remade the CRC and driven away many members. 

The underlying issue for the past four synods has been sex. It’s important not to lose sight of this. Synods may talk about authority, clarity, alignment, and being confessional, but the concern then and now is about sex. More precisely, queer sex. CRC synods since 2022 have been intent on slamming the door on anything and anyone granting ecclesiastical legitimacy to queer sex. Not only slamming the door, but turning the key, setting the alarm, and hunkering down, hoping that one day the culture will come back their way. In doing this, recent CRC synods have effectively collapsed the theological authority structure of the church, and it’s this collapse of the historic Reformed view of theological authority that is the real story of Synod 2025. 

The structure of theological authority in Reformed churches

The fundamental structure of theological authority was laid out with admirable economy 50 years ago by Synod 1975 in three steps: Scripture, the Reformed confessions (ecumenical creeds consistently get short shrift in CRC theological thinking), and synodical decisions, in that order. It specified:

[That (1)] the Reformed Confessions are subordinate to the Scripture. . .

[That (2) the confessions are to be] “accepted as a true interpretation of this Word” (CRC Church Order, Article 1),

[and that (3)] synodical pronouncements on doctrinal and ethical matters are subordinate to the confessions to be considered “settled and binding, unless it is proved that they conflict with the Word of God or the Church Order (Church Order, Article 29).

The vocabulary employed in these statements is precise. Confessions are not scripture; they guide the interpretation of scripture. Synodical decisions are not confessional; they interpret the confessions. 

Each of these levels of theological authority has its own weight. The scriptures are word of God. They are not only about God; they are encounters with God. Their weight is the weight of the divine voice. How precisely God speaks in the scriptures is always under discussion in the church, but that’s for another time. It’s enough for now to say that the church recognizes the scriptures as God’s word. 

The scriptures are also catholic in their nature. They are part of the fabric that holds the entire church together. Churches may vary somewhat in the books included in the Bible, but these variations are on the edges of the canon. The core scriptures, Old Testament and New, hold us together. They are the same everywhere. 

The confessions, in contrast, are the testimonies of particular branches of the church. The confessions recognized by the CRC mark the denomination as Reformed and, because the CRC confessions do not include the Westminster Confession and Catechisms, mark it more narrowly as Dortian Reformed—the branch of Reformed churches that adhere to the decisions and rulings of the Synod of Dort (1618-19). 

Confessions carry the weight of subscription. One subscribes to a tradition and perspective. What it means to subscribe to a tradition is contested, but generally it involves affirming as one’s own a tradition, a way of thought. I’ll have more to say about that below.

Finally, synodical decisions carry the weight of being “settled and binding.” “Settled” means that once decided an issue should not be brought up again to synod without a strong reason to do so.  “Binding” means that synodical decisions set denominational policy. If the synod decides that church leaders should not be members of a lodge (a big issue a couple of generations ago), then they should not join a lodge. What “settled and binding” does not mean is that you are required to agree with the decisions of synod. You may think a given synodical decision has been wrongly decided, and you are free to say so. If you are a delegate, you may do so at the synod itself by registering in the official minutes your negative vote, there for the generations to come to see and know that you were not in favor of that particular synodical motion. I have done more than a few of those myself. 

Blurring the lines

So, three levels: scripture, confessions, synodical decisions. If we were to explore the Reformed structure of theological authority in more detail, we would want to nuance these relationships in various ways. We need not do so here. The point is that this structure requires the church and church leadership to respect the integrity of each of these levels of authority. It all begins to fall apart if synodical decisions are taken to be confessional, blurring the lines between synods and confessions; and in the same way, it falls apart if confessions are taken to be scripture. But this is just what recent CRC synods have done. They have collapsed the levels into one: synodical decisions are taken to be confessional, and the confessions are taken to be tantamount to the Bible. 

This amounts to a Protestant version of papal infallibility, and it has been adopted for the reasons similar to those that drove the 19^th century Roman Catholic Church to ascribe infallibility to the pope: a desire to preserve traditional structures of society which they believe to be threatened. It’s a way of winning the argument without winning the argument. You simply declare the argument over. The synod (or the pope) has decided; you can shape up or ship out.

In the CRC many have shipped out: members, pastors, whole congregations. Disaffiliation from the CRC goes apace; it has not come to an end. Those who remain must sign on to the synodical position on human sexuality, and do so repeatedly. The synod wants to make sure that no one gets away with a contrary opinion. For this reason Synod 2025 reiterated an earlier decision that delegates to CRC classes (regional church assemblies) are required to sign the Covenant for Officebearers at every classis meeting. Make no mistake what this is about. It’s about expressing agreement with a narrow set of recent synodical decisions, crucially the decision on queer sex. 

The synod also probed and tightened down compliance by denominational boards, by the Council of Delegates (the denominational board of trustees), and by the denominational educational institutions, Calvin University and Calvin Theological Seminary. The seminary administration seems to have gone into this way of thinking willingly. Still, the synod wanted them to make sure that there were no outliers teaching in adjunct positions. But it’s the position of Calvin University that is especially troubling. Calvin has long been a jewel among denomination enterprises. Appearing before the synod, chair-elect of Calvin Board of Trustees Perrin Rynders and college provost Noah Toly assured the synod that they would work towards compliance with synodical positions. New hires would be instructed in the CRC position and required to sign on to it. Rynders said: “Our job (at Calvin University) is to teach fully in accord with the teachings synod tells us about.”

Pause there: “fully in accord with the teachings synod tells us about.” If this was not a misstatement by Rynders but represents the policy of the board going forward, it amounts to a wholesale abdication of the role of a university. Calvin is and has always been embedded in a history and in a theological tradition. It’s legitimate to ask faculty and administration to be committed to this tradition—to subscribe to it. Nothing new there. But to require that Calvin instruction be directed by synodical decisions abdicates the responsibility of a university to test the truth, including the truth of the latest synod. To do less than this is to turn teaching into propaganda and to cast doubt on whether the latest synod’s truth can stand up to questioning. If this is the direction in which Calvin is headed, I despair of Calvin surviving as a place of inquiry and freedom of thought.

Synod 2025 also clamped down on the editorial freedom of The Banner. They have changed The Banner’s mandate from the responsibility to air issues, including all sides of denominational controversies, to the promotion of the CRC (read synodical) point of view. To grab a phrase from the Calvin board chair-elect, the new requirement is that The Banner be “fully in accord with the teachings synod tells [them] about. 

An ecclesiastical sleight of hand

These actions move in a single direction: the tightening of denominational control over theological thought. The centerpiece of these efforts is a decision that was supposed to “clarify distinctions in synodical pronouncements, decisions, reports, positions, and advice.” What Synod 2025 adopted is not about clarity; there isn’t much clarity in it. It’s about providing synodical warrant for what Synod did in 2022. 

The language adopted by the synod specifies four types of synodical decisions. Only the first matters. They call it  “confessional interpretation”:

[A confessional interpretation is] an official statement or declaration made by synod, which clarifies which doctrines are contained in the creeds and confessions of the church. By definition, confessional interpretations require officebearers to agree that the doctrine fully agrees with the Word of God, or file a gravamen.

Aside from the curious commas, this is a remarkable statement. It’s not just what it says; it’s what it is trying not to say that is important. At stake is the procedure followed by Synod 2022 to rule that their condemnation of homosexual relations is not just a synodical decision (“settled and binding”) but confessional—thereby, jumping the levels of authority. For this purpose, Synod 2022 latched on to Heidelberg Catechism Question and Answer 108 (Q&A 108). Q&A 108, an interpretation of the seventh commandment (“You shall not commit adultery.”), states that “God condemns all unchastity” and that “we should therefore thoroughly detest it.”—a statement with which it is quite impossible to disagree. Unchastity, by definition, is wrong. No one is for unchastity. 

But here is where the synod produced an ecclesiastical sleight of hand. They said that the word “unchastity” in Q&A 108 includes homosexual relations. They proposed, further, that this was not a synodical interpretation but was the meaning of the catechism. This is what the Heidelberg Catechism had in mind all along. It was just waiting for a synod to say so. And if it was there all along in the catechism, then the condemnation of homosexual relations is not just a synodical position; it’s confessional. The Heidelberg Catechism so declares. A nifty move, if you can make it stick.

With that in mind, read again what Synod 2025 wrote: [A confessional interpretation is] an official statement or declaration made by synod, which clarifies which doctrines are contained in the creeds and confessions of the church. “Contained in,” as in already there. The synod can, the statement claims, simply declare that a confessional statement includes—has always included—something it does not actually name. A future synod could adopt the same procedure for, say, the Heidelberg Catechism commentary on the eighth commandment, “You shall not steal” (Q&A 110). The catechism says that “in God’s sight, theft also includes cheating and swindling our neighbor by schemes made to appear legitimate. . ..” The synod might discover in this a confessional condemnation of, say, the pyramidal strategy of a corporation like Amway. In signing the Covenant for Officebearers (more on this below) one would be required to agree—“without reservation”—that the way Amway has operated in violation of the confessions. 

You may say, this is unfair. The writers of the Heidelberg Catechism did not have Amway in mind; they could not have. The business strategy of corporations like Amway did not exist in the 16^th century. But this is also true of same sex marriage and the view of homosexuality now taken for granted in our era. Homosexuality in the sense that the word now has did not exist for 16^th century people. 

This was the core of the debate in the CRC in 2022, when synod made its decision. No one was denying Q&A 108. The question was not whether unchastity was wrong. The question was whether homosexual relations are unchaste simply because they are homosexual (the position of the synod) or whether they are no less chaste and good than heterosexual relations provided they are part of a committed (marriage) relationship. This was the argument. Those on the side of condemning homosexual relations as unchaste produced a 175-page study report, and those on the other side, among whom I count myself, said that the study report was badly done and tendentiously produced. The fact that the synod voted one way or the other did not mean the argument was over. There were more scriptures to be read, theologies to be debated, and decisions to be made. But those in power at Synod 2022 realized—still realize, I suspect—that they will ultimately lose those arguments. So they did the next best thing: they declared the argument over. The ruling that homosexual relations are unchaste is, they said, confessional. And by confessional they meant the end of the conversation. No more talking about this in the church. And they did so by the dubious procedure I outlined above. And Synod 2025, by adopting their category of “confessional interpretation,” attempted to provide church order warrant for this procedure.

But this is the collapse of the spiritual authority of the confessions into the decision-making process of synod. It collapses the first two layers of the structure of theological authority in Reformed churches. It provides a way for synods to declare their decisions confessional.

The meaning of subscription

The second collapse—the scriptures into the confessions—had conveniently already taken place. Here we need a brief introduction to the process by which office holders in the CRC subscribe to the confessions. Note that the new 2025 guideline for “confessional interpretations” not only provides a way for synods to declare their decisions confessional, but it makes the confessions word of God by declaring  that “by definition, confessional interpretations require officebearers to agree that the doctrine fully agrees with the Word of God. . ..” 

The language, “fully agrees with the Word of God,” comes from the denominational Covenant for Officebearers, a statement of agreement with the confession standards of the denomination. This statement, adopted by Synod 2012, replaces an earlier version known as the “Form of Subscription.” The old Form of Subscription included a statement “that all the articles and points of doctrine set forth in the Belgic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, and the Canons of Dort fully agree with the Word of God” (italics added). 

The new Covenant for Officebearers proposed to Synod 2012 dropped the “fully agree” language and instead offered:

We also affirm three confessions—the Belgic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, and the Canons of Dort—as historic Reformed expressions of the Christian faith. These confessions continue to define the way we understand Scripture, direct the way we live in response to the gospel, and locate us within the larger body of Christ. (Acts of Synod 2012:453)

The statement as presented takes a historical approach to the confessions: these documents, it says, go deep in our history, and they continue to guide us. But Synod was not satisfied with this historical approach and added in the old “fully agree” language at the end of the first sentence. It now reads as above but after “as historic Reformed expressions of the Christian faith” it says, “whose doctrines fully agree with the Word of God” (italics added).

The statement as it now stands is incoherent. It is wrong about both the confessions and about the Bible. The claim that the Reformed confessions “fully agree with the Word of God” means that their truth is eternal. They are not historic in any ordinary sense of historic. That they belong to the 16^th and 17^th centuries is irrelevant: their truth is eternal truth. 

This formulation assumes that the Bible can be distilled into a set of theological and moral propositions—a systematic theology accompanied by a legal code. But the Bible is not like this. The only way to get to such a theology is by the process of distillation. In interpreting the Bible, you take a statement here—say, John 3:16—to be important, word of God, and you take another statement—say, Deuteronomy 7:2—as mere background. You pick and choose. But this is a bad way to read the Bible. The Bible should not be distilled down but engaged in all its variety and complexity. But if you do this, if you take the Bible in all its variety and complexity, what would “fully agree” mean? “Fully agree” with what? With Paul? With James? With the New Testament? With the Old Testament? You see the problem.

With the confessions, you have the opposite issue. The confessions are by their nature distillations, compilations of theological propositions. They are distillations prepared in the heat of controversy in the 16^thand 17^th centuries in Europe. There is much they see, and there is much they don’t see. To say that they “fully agree” with the Bible means that in their historical moment they finally got right what the church for a millennium and a half had struggled toward without ever quite getting to the truth. We know this is not true. The confessions are human. They are limited by time and place.

So, what does “fully agree with the Word of God” mean? Not what it says. It can’t. As soon as anyone tries to specify in detail what “fully agree” means, the concept falls apart. What “fully agree” meant historically in the Dortian tradition (the Form of Subscription goes back to the Synod of Dort) is that the confessions are a reliable guide to the scriptures. They open up the scriptures in ways that generations of Christians have found helpful, beginning with the beloved first question and answer in the Heidelberg Catechism: Q: “What is your only comfort in life and death? A: That I am not my own but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.” To subscribe to the confessions is to say, yes, I’m one of those.

But lately in the CRC the “fully agree” language has come to have another meaning. It’s come to mean that the confessions have scriptural authority. To disagree with the confessions is, in this way of thinking, tantamount to disagreeing with scripture. No, more than that, to disagreeing with the word of God—with God’s own voice. And so, the “fully agree” language is used to collapse confessional authority and scriptural authority, and this is what Synod 2025 was up to. In its declaration defining “confessional interpretation,” it first collapses synodical and confessional authority, and it then collapses confessional and scriptural authority. All in the interest of condemning queer sex.

A bad business

This is a bad business. Synodical opinions are transitory. To claim, as have the recent CRC synods, that a 2022 decision about queer sex is not only confessional but the very word of God is to elevate synods to what they cannot be. And to claim to be Reformed—in the more-Reformed-than-you mode so claimed by recent CRC synods—while collapsing what is perhaps the most important part of the Reformed legacy, the structure of theological authority, is to lose the thing itself. You can’t be Reformed and fail to respect the structure of theological authority that underlies the reform. 

But we should recognize by now that the current synods of the CRC seem little interested in reformation. If being Reformed means forever trying to grasp the gospel anew, then they are not Reformed. If being biblical means forever reading the scriptures to hear the voice of God anew, then they are not biblical. 

The church needs better than this. 

Clay