(Tim) With the release of Sarah Palin's book, Going Rogue, there is increasing talk of her presidential aspirations. As I have said before, I could vote for a woman for office. But it would be due to other considerations that, in my view, relegated her sex to a tertiary place in matters of consequence--the most obvious being her commitment to opposing the wholesale slaughter of the unborn across our land when her opponent was a proponent of that slaughter. Casting such a vote, though, I'd be under no delusion that her sex didn't matter. It would matter, but other things would matter even more.
Here are a few short statements--one from Marvin Olasky, several from Early Church Fathers, and several from John Calvin--explaining why sex does matter outside the home. First, an excerpt from an interview we did with World's editor-in-chief, Marvin Olasky, when I served as the Exec. Dir. of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood and edited...
CBMW's journal:
CBMW (David Wegener): How has feminism influenced the church?
Marvin Olasky: Feminism has influenced our understanding of compassion. We need to return to the older understanding of that term. It has also impacted our practice of church discipline--or lack of practice, as the case may be.
The whole question of society and the church comes in here. God does not forbid women to be leaders in society, generally speaking, but when that occurs it's usually because of the abdication of men. As in the situation of Deborah and Barak, there's a certain shame attached to it. I would vote for a woman for the presidency, in some situations, but again, there's a certain shame attached. Why don't you have a man who's able to step forward? God's Word says very plainly that an elder is to be a man; he is to be the husband of one wife. It's harder when there are women who are CEO's of companies and so forth. Still, it comes down to the question of "Do we trust God and do we believe that He has wisdom that we don't have?"
Marvin doesn't quite get at the nub of Scripture's doctrine of sexuality, here, but he summarizes Scripture's teaching quite well in declaring "there's a certain shame attached to" women leaders in society, declaring it all to be a matter of faith. Better the Early Church Fathers and John Calvin:
Chrysostom: Woman was not made for this, O man, to be prostituted as common. O ye subverters of all decency, who use men, as if they were women, and lead out women to war, as if they were men! This is the work of the devil, to subvert and confound all things, to overleap the boundaries that have been appointed from the beginning, and remove those which God has set to nature. For God assigned to woman the care of the house only, to man the conduct of public affairs. But you reduce the head to the feet, and raise the feet to the head. You suffer women to bear arms, and are not ashamed. (Chrysostom, Homily on Titus 2:14).
Clement of Alexandria: We do not say that woman's nature is the same as man's, as she is woman. For undoubtedly it stands to reason that some difference should exist between each of them, in virtue of which one is male and the other female. Pregnancy and parturition, accordingly, we say belong to woman, as she is woman, and not as she is a human being. But if there were no difference between man and woman, both would do and suffer the same things. As then there is sameness, as far as respects the soul, she will attain to the same virtue; but as there is difference as respects the peculiar construction of the body, she is destined for child-bearing and housekeeping.... For we do not train our women like Amazons to manliness in war (although) I hear that the Sarmatian women practice war no less than the men; and the women of the Sacae besides, who shoot backwards, feigning fight as well as the men. (Clement of Alexandria, The Stromata, book 4, chapter 8).
John Calvin: This decree also commends modesty in general, and in it God anticipates the danger, lest women should harden themselves into forgetfulness of modesty, or men should degenerate into effeminacy unworthy of their nature. Garments are not in themselves of so much importance; but as it is disgraceful for men to become effeminate, and also for women to affect manliness in their dress and gestures, propriety and modesty are prescribed, not only for decency's sake, but lest one kind of liberty should at length lead to something worse. The words of the heathen poet (Juvenal) are very true: "What shame can she, who wears a helmet, show, Her sex deserting?" (John Calvin, exposition of the Seventh Commandment; John Calvin, Commentaries on the Four Last Books of Moses Arranged in the Form of a Harmony, tr. Charles Bingham, 22 vols., (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, repr. 1996), 3:110).
John Calvin: Two years ago, John Knox in a private conversation, asked my opinion respecting female government. I frankly answered that because it was a deviation from the primitive and established order of nature, it ought to be held as a judgment on man for his dereliction of his rights just like slavery-that nevertheless certain women had sometimes been so gifted that the singular blessing of God was conspicuous in them, and made it manifest that they had been raised up by the providence of God, either because He willed by such examples to condemn the supineness of men, or thus show more distinctly His own glory. I here instanced Huldah and Deborah." John Calvin, "Letter DXXXVIII to William Cecil" in Selected Works of John Calvin: Tracts and Letters, ed. Henry Beveridge & Jules Bonnet, vol. 7, (Philadelphia, 1860), p. 46.
Finally, this from the Word of God:
Say to the righteous that it will go well with them, For they will eat the fruit of their actions. Woe to the wicked! It will go badly with him, For what he deserves will be done to him. O My people! Their oppressors are children, And women rule over them. O My people! Those who guide you lead you astray And confuse the direction of your paths. (Isaiah 3:10-12)
