Four elders filed a dissent regarding the action of the 53rd General Assembly on Overture 37. The dissent was authored by teaching elders Aaron Baker, Jeffrey Choi, Walter Henegar, and Eric Kapur. The General Assembly voted to direct the moderator to appoint a commission of elders to formulate an answer to the dissent, which has now been published and will be included in the Assembly’s minutes. The response was authored by teaching elders Ligon Duncan, David Garner, Thomas Gibbs, Jonathan Master, and Guy Waters.

Overture 37 was submitted by Pacific Presbytery and, if approved, would have amended the Book of Church Order “to allow local Sessions to decide whether qualified women should be allowed to serve as deacons.” When the General Assembly met, the Overtures Committee voted 115-14-1 to recommend answering the overture in the negative. The Assembly voted in favor of the committee’s recommendation. 

The BCO defines a dissent as “a declaration on the part of one or more members of a minority, expressing a different opinion from the majority in its action on any issue before the court, and may be accompanied with the reasons on which it is founded” (BCO 45-2). A dissent can be submitted by “any member of a court who had a right to vote on a question, and is not satisfied with the action taken by that court” (BCO 45-1). 

The full text of the dissent can be read here. The authors of the dissent believe the grounds provided for the Overtures Committee’s vote were insufficient: 

The 53rd General Assembly voted Overture 37 in the negative. The Overtures Committee recommended disapproval on the grounds that ‘Our Constitutional documents are a sufficient expression of the Biblical warrant, nature, qualifications, and duties of Deacons.’ The undersigned dissent from this recommendation, not because the Constitutional documents are untrustworthy, but because the grounds stated by the committee assume precisely what is in dispute.

The authors provide exegetical, historical, and constitutional arguments for their position.

The full text of the answer is available here. The response makes exegetical, historical, and constitutional arguments in defense of the Assembly’s decision:  

The General Assembly has correctly decided that, with respect to the question of whether women may hold the office of deacon, the PCA’s Constitution is both biblically faithful and constitutionally sufficient. The office of deacon is open to men only (BCO 7-2). The polity of the PCA already authorizes the session to select and appoint godly men and women to be as fully involved in assisting the deacons in the diaconal ministry of the church as the Scripture itself allows (BCO 9-7).

According to the BCO, when a dissent is filed and the church files an official answer, “Here the matter shall end” (45-5).