# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1956_S555
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

INTERSYNODICAL AND DOCTRINAL MATTERS 555

not wholly adequate in all respects. Here and there are points
which may be questioned or modified. Furthermore, his book deals
primarily with the question of woman’s ordination to the pastoral
office and does not give direct answer to all the questions on the
status of woman which arise in our American church life. How-
ever, the basic Scriptural principles which have guided our own
church in these matters are clearly enunciated, frequently with
fresh insights that are valuable for clarification of our thinking.

In trying to carry out our assignment we have welcomed the
letters of quite a number of pastors and laymen dealing with our
problem, and we have given them serious consideration. We also
received a number of conference essays on the problem that proved
helpful to us in various ways. We have been aware of the danger
of being influenced in our thinking, on the one hand, by inherited
positions, on the other hand, by current trends out of harmony with
these positions. We have determined to listen with both ears to
the voice of our Lord speaking in and through His own Word.
By that Word our report must be judged. We believe sincerely
that the church is God’s own creation through the Holy Spirit
working through the Word. We believe therefore that all the
activities of the congregation must be controlled by the principles
which He has set up for guidance of the church, His own church,
in which He is ever the Giver and the Lord and we but the
receivers who must live by what He gives-us and as He directs us.

IL. Scripture on Woman in the Church (Zerbst, pp. 31—81)

A. Order of Creation and Order of Redemption.

1. These terms will frequently be used in the following dis-
cussions. The substance of these terms has always been present
to the students of Scripture, although the terms themselves have
come into general usage in more recent times. “Order” is here
used in the sense of relative position in a series.

2. Order of Creation designates the particular position which
by the will of the Creator any created object occupies in relation
to others. Thus man has a position in creation different from that
of all other animate and all inanimate creatures (Genesis 1).
On the level of life in this world husband and wife, parents and
children, have their own assigned position in relation to each other
(Table of Duties). The triad Father-Mother-Child is one that
even atheistic evolutionists cannot escape, although they believe
néither in Creation nor in Redemption. This triangular relation-
ship belongs to the very structure of existence (Werner Elert uses
the term Seins-Gefiige).