Cindy K

Calvinism and complementarianism?  It is old, old tradition.

They carry torches for the Scottish John Knox and his “First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women” with great passion.  Knox retreated to Geneva when “Bloody” Mary Tudor reestablished Catholicism in the UK, and while in Geneva, Knox gleaned from the wisdom of Calvin himself.

Ah, for those of you unfamiliar with this lovely writing, here’s a taste:

http://www.swrb.com/newslett/actualNLs/firblast.htm

“That the weak, the sick, and impotent persons shall nourish and keep the whole and strong? And finally, that the foolish, mad, and frenetic shall govern the discreet, and give counsel to such as be sober of mind? And such be all women, compared unto man in bearing of authority. For their sight in civil regiment is but blindness; their strength, weakness; their counsel, foolishness; and judgment, frenzy, if it be rightly considered…

Nature, I say, does paint them forth to be weak, frail, impatient, feeble, and foolish; and experience has declared them to be inconstant, variable, cruel, lacking the spirit of counsel and regiment…

Would to God the examples were not so manifest to the further declaration of the imperfections of women, of their natural weakness and inordinate appetites! I might adduce histories, proving some women to have died for sudden joy; some for impatience to have murdered themselves; some to have burned with such inordinate lust, that for the quenching of the same, they have betrayed to strangers their country and city; and some to have been so desirous of dominion, that for the obtaining of the same, they have murdered the children of their own sons, yea, and some have killed with cruelty their own husbands and children…

For God, first by the order of his creation, and after by the curse and malediction pronounced against the woman (by reason of her rebellion) has pronounced the contrary…

But after her fall and rebellion committed against God, there was put upon her a new necessity, and she was made subject to man by the irrevocable sentence of God…

This sentence, I say, did God pronounce against Eve and her daughters, as the rest of the scriptures do evidently witness. So that no woman can ever presume to reign above man, but the same she must needs do in despite of God, and in contempt of his punishment and malediction…

[Speaking of both 1 Tim 2:12 & 1 Cor 14:34] These two testimonies of the Holy Ghost are sufficient to prove whatsoever we have affirmed before, and to repress the inordinate pride of women, as also to correct the foolishness of those that have studied to exalt women in authority above men, against God and against his sentence pronounced…

The apostle takes power from all women to speak in the assembly. Ergo, he permits no woman to rule above man…

He then goes on to quote many of the patristic writings about women which are mostly Roman Catholic, something ironic because even Knox essentially bashes them in the sermon.

But impossible it is to man and angel to give unto her the properties and perfect offices of a lawful head; for the same God that has denied power to the hand to speak, to the belly to hear, and to the feet to see, has denied to woman power to command man, and has taken away wisdom to consider, and providence to foresee,the things that are profitable to the commonwealth: yea, finally, he has denied to her in any case to be head to a man, but plainly has pronounced that “man is head to woman, even as Christ is head to all man [every man]” (1 Cor. 11:3)…

For what man was there of so base judgment (supposing that he had any light of God), who did not see the erecting of that monster to be the overthrow of true religion…

I mean, I could put the whole thing up here.  And notably, it was written in protest to the Catholic Mary Tudor, but it all backfired on him somewhat when Elizabeth I succeeded her, considering that she was a devoted protestant.  And in his passionate discourse, he did build his entire argument upon male headship and the typical Scriptures used and applied by those devoted to the complementarian cause.