Taking a Mealy-Mouthed Stand

I found the following two questions and answers within a list of "Fifty Crucial Questions" about gender posted on the website of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, whose stated mission is "to proclaim the truth of God's Word regarding God's wise design for the complementary differences between men and women who share equally in the image of God, in order better to equip evangelical homes, churches, academic institutions, and other ministries to be faithful to His Word and thus to experience the goodness of His created purposes for men and women."

Question 29. But it does look as if Paul really thought Eve was somehow more vulnerable to deception than Adam. Wouldn't this make Paul a culpable chauvinist?

Answer: No. When someone asks if women are weaker than men, or smarter than men, or more easily frightened than men, or something like that, perhaps the best way to answer is this: women are weaker in some ways and men are weaker in some ways; women are smarter in some ways and men are smarter in some ways; women are more easily frightened in some circumstances and men are more easily frightened in others. It is dangerous to put negative values on the so-called weaknesses that each of us has. God intends for all the "weaknesses" that characteristically belong to man to call forth and highlight woman's strengths. And God intends for all the "weaknesses" that characteristically belong to woman to call forth and highlight man's strengths.

Even if 1 Timothy 2:14 meant that in some circumstances women are characteristically more vulnerable to deception, that would not settle anything about the equality or worth of manhood and womanhood. Boasting in either sex as superior to the other is folly. Men and women, as God created us, are different in hundreds of ways. Being created equally in the image of God means at least this: that when the so-called weakness and strength columns for manhood and for womanhood are added up, the value at the bottom is going to be the same for each. And when you take those two columns and put them on top of each other, God intends them to be the perfect complement to each other.

Question 47: If you believe that role distinctions for men and women in the home and the church are rooted in God's created order, why are you not as insistent about applying the rules everywhere in secular life as you are in the home and the church?

Answer: As we move out from the church and the home we move further from what is fairly clear and explicit to what is more ambiguous and inferential. Therefore our emphasis moves more and more away from specific role recommendations (like the ones made in Scripture), and instead focuses on the realization of male and female personhood through the more subjective dimensions of relationship like demeanor, bearing, attitudes, courtesies, initiatives, and numerous spoken and unspoken expectations.

We believe the Bible makes clear that men should take primary responsibility for leadership in the home and that, in the church, the primary teaching and governing leadership should be given by spiritual men. We take this to be a Biblical expression of the goodness and the wisdom of God concerning the nature of leadership in these roles and the nature of manhood and womanhood. That is, rather than leaving to us to judge for ourselves whether mature manhood and womanhood would be preserved and enhanced through the primary leadership of men or women in these spheres, God was explicit about what would be good for us. However, when it comes to all the thousands of occupations and professions, with their endlessly varied structures of management, God has chosen not to be specific about which roles men and women should fill. Therefore we are not as sure in this wider sphere which roles can be carried out by men or women in ways that honor the unique worth of male and female personhood. For this reason we focus (within some limits) on how these roles are carried out rather than which ones are appropriate.

I thought that these answers were very mealy-mouthed and so I sent the following email, including the John Calvin quotes, to Randy Stinson who is the Executive Director of the group. Not surprisingly, I received no reply.

I largely agree with the things posted on the CBMW website. But when I contrast your words above with John Calvin's words below, I must say that your answers sound quite timid and wishy-washy. In Reformation times, men did not shrink back from declaring the truth, in very plain words, that women are the weaker sex (both in body and in mind). Nor did they denigrate women in teaching this, as they also emphasized that the man's strength is to be used in service to the woman, that he is incomplete without her, that he is dependent upon her, and that he is to love her as if she were his own flesh (which she is).

Furthermore, they did not limit the Bible's teaching about male superiority to what is practiced in the home and in a church's meeting place. Evidently, they understood that throughout its pages, the Bible exemplifies a patriarchal society and the dominion of men over women in all spheres of life, and that there is no reason to believe that this is something which God meant to be changed over time.

Stuart DiNenno



John Calvin commenting on the folly of women reigning over men:

"Yet consider now, whether women are not quite past sense and reason, when they want to rule over men. In a word, it is madness. For, were men made for women? It is true that today men are as channels through which God causes His grace to stream down upon women. For, from whence does labor come? From where do all the most excellent things and highlyesteemed things come? To be sure, it all comes from the men's side. So God is wellpleased for men to serve the good of women, as experience shows. Yet St. Paul has an eye here to the beginning of the creation, where it was said that it was not good for the man to be alone, and that he needed someone at hand who would always be ready to help. Since God was thinking of the man, it certainly follows that the woman is only an accessory. And why? Because she was only created for the sake of man, and she must therefore direct her whole life toward him. She must confess, "I am not supposed to be without direction here, not knowing my purpose and station. Rather, I am obliged by God, if I am married, to serve my husband, and render him honor and reverence. And, if I am not married, I am bound to walk in all soberness and modesty, cognizant that men have the higher rank, and that they must rule, and that the woman who disregards this forgets the law of nature and perverts what should be observed as God commands." This then the place to which St. Paul brings back women."

John Calvin commenting, in regard to 1 Corinthians 11:10, on the superiority of the male sex:

"It is asked, whether he speaks of married women exclusively, for there are some that restrict to them what Paul teaches, on the ground that it does not belong to virgins to be under the authority of a husband. It is however a mistake, for Paul looks beyond this to God's eternal law, which has made the female sex subject to the authority of men. On this account all women are born, that they may acknowledge themselves inferior in consequence of the superiority of the male sex."

Calvin commenting, in regard to 1 Corinthians 14:34, about the impropriety of feminine rule:

"the office of teaching is a superiority in the Church, and is, consequently, inconsistent with subjection. For how unseemly a thing it were that one who is under subjection to one of the members, should preside over the entire body! It is therefore an argument from things inconsistent -- If the woman is under subjection, she is, consequently, prohibited from authority to teach in public. If the woman is under subjection, she is, consequently, prohibited from authority to teach in public. And unquestionably, whenever even natural propriety has been maintained, women have in all ages been excluded from the public management of affairs. It is the dictate of common sense, that female government is improper and unseemly."

Calvin on 1 Timothy 2:13 speaking about man's "inferior aid":

"Now Moses shews that the woman was created afterwards, in order that she might be a kind of appendage to the man; and that she was joined to the man on the express condition, that she should be at hand to render obedience to him. ( Genesis 2:21 .) Since, therefore, God did not create two chiefs of equal power, but added to the man an inferior aid, the Apostle justly reminds us of that order of creation in which the eternal and inviolable appointment of God is strikingly displayed."