Lux Lucet

“The Squad” – Democratic Representatives Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – and Donald Trump. Getty Images.

“[The government of women] has always been regarded by all wise persons as a monstrous thing.”

    – John Calvin, Commentary on 1 Timothy

“I distance myself from this decidedly and stand in solidarity with the women who were attacked,” said German Chancellor Angela Merkel. “The prime minister’s view is that the language used to refer to these women was completely unacceptable,” said a spokesman for British Prime Minister Theresa May. From New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Arden we heard, “I completely and utterly disagree with him.” “Wrong and completely unacceptable,” said Justin Trudeau of Canada.

If you haven’t already guessed, all the above quotes were directed at Donald Trump and his well known Twitter storm from last weekend where he invited four first-term, Democratic Congresswomen to, “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”

Of all the controversial things Donald Trump has said and Tweeted, this one, perhaps, has maxed out the trigger meter the most.

But the rending of garments was not limited to foreign heads of state, as Trump’s tweets created a predictable stir domestically. “I know racism when I see it. I know racism when I feel it. And at the highest levels of government, there is no room for racism,” said Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.). Said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, “Every single member of this institution, Democratic and Republican, should join us in condemning the president’s racist tweets.” On Tuesday, the US House of Representatives passed a resolution that, “strongly condemns President Donald Trump’s racist comments.”

Racist, racist, racist. That’s the language the Democrats used when condemning Trump’s tweets. But here’s the thing, nowhere in his tweets did Donald Trump say anything about race. What he did was criticize, at least in general terms, the political stances of four freshman Democrats: Alexandria Ocasio-Corez, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley and Ilhan Omar. The last time I checked, criticizing the ideas of individuals is not racism, so the charge by the Democrats is a strange one.

But this post is not about defending Trump’s tweets or grappling with the reactions of critics foreign and domestic. In the opinion of this author, the President, his supporters and his critics have all overlooked a more fundamental issue, one which I intend to address.

You see, the fundamental problem with the four first-term Democrats is not that they are ethnic minorities. It is not their socialist politics. Nor is it their, at least in some cases, questioning of the almost blind support the US gives to Israel, a state of affairs that very much needs to be questioned.

No. The fundamental problem is that as women they do not belong in elected office.

Yes, you read that right. As women, these four individuals have no business being in elected office.

John Robbins on Woman Suffrage and Women Office Holders

In today’s world, that women have a right to vote and hold public office is almost universally held as a self-evident truth. This is the case as much among MAGA conservatives as it is among hard-core, SJW liberals.

That may seem like a strange statement to some – the notion that there is a broad-based philosophical agreement among liberals and conservatives. But ask yourself, when was the last time you ever heard anyone, Republican or Democrat, challenge the consensus that women have a right to vote and hold public office?

Now Republicans and Democrats will argue about which women to put in office and about to appeal to women voters. But the underlying assumption that it is right and proper for women to vote and hold office is never questioned.

But thankfully, there are some thinkers who are willing to question this near-universal assumption. John Robbins was one such writer, which is one of the reasons why his work is so refreshing as compared to the usual drivel that falls from the pens of most Christian writers.

In a response to a letter from a reader asking about women voting in congregational elections of elders and deacons, Robbins wrote,

The explicit commands for women to be silent and in subjection to men in church meetings seem to me to eliminate woman suffrage in churches. We tend to forget how recent a thing woman suffrage is. Women did not generally vote in churches until the nineteenth century-only yesterday in terms of church history-and it was not until 1920 that the nineteenth Amendment was added to the U. S. Constitution granting women the right to vote. As for a broader application of these principles of church government, civil rulers are also described in the Bible as ministers of God. I believe the principles apply to civil government as well. But in economic affairs there seems to be greater latitude for women. The woman of Proverbs 31 must negotiate with other merchants. Again, however, in this day of women’s lib, there is a danger of reading too much into Proverbs 31. All the woman’s activities were home-centered; it was her husband who sat in the gates (“Should Women Vote?” N.B. please scroll to the bottom of the linked page to read the reader’s letter and Dr. Robbins’ response).

In the opinion of this author, Robbins was right on target in his answer. First, he answers the reader’s question by stating that the “explicit commands for women to be silent and in subjection to men in church meetings seem to me to eliminate woman suffrage in churches.”

But Robbins doesn’t stop there. He continues by applying the principle he articulated concerning church government to civil government. Robbins appeals to the fact that the Bible refers to civil rulers as “ministers of God” (see Romans 13) as reason for barring women from voting in elections for civil rulers and, by extension, from holding public office.

Some may object to Robbins’ linking these church government and civil government, since, at least as far as I’m aware, the Bible says nothing explicit about who gets to vote in elections for civil government. But what Robbins is doing is applying logic. You see, it’s not just the explicit statements of Scripture to which we must conform our thinking, but also to the logical implications of Scripture.

Reading Robbins response, it seems to me that what he is saying is that, since all government – family government, church government and civil government – the principles that apply in one apply in all. Since the Bible clearly restricts women from church government, the same restriction applies in civil government, and, although Robbins doesn’t mention it here, in family government as well.

Although many in our feminist dominated age would find Robbins’ conclusion shocking, not only is his logical case sound, but he finds himself in good company as well.

In the quote at the top of this page, in his commentary on 1 Timothy John Calvin called the government of women – Calvin used the Greek word gunaikokratia – “a monstrous thing.” Calvin was exegeting the passage in 1 Timothy 2:12 where Paul forbids women to teach or to have authority over a man. And while Calvin’s comments certainly have their application within the church, Calvin’s language seems to indicate that he was thinking about civil government as much as he was about the government of the church.

John Knox was of the same mind. In his extraordinary essay The
First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, he wrote,

To promote a woman to bear rule, superiority, dominion, or empire above any realm, nation, or city, is repugnant to nature, contumelious to God, a thing most contrary to his revealed will and approved ordinance, and finally it is the subversion of good order, and of all equity and justice….

… The revealed will and perfect ordinance of God …do manifestly oppose that any woman shall reign or bear dominion over man. For God first by order of his creation, and after by the curse and malediction pronounced against the woman by the reason of her rebellion, has pronounced the contrary.

In his essay, Knox reasons from the Scriptures to conclude that women are prohibited by the Scriptures from holding public office, the same as John Calvin and John Robbins.

But What About the Separation of Church and State?

Some may object to Knox, Calvin and Robbins by crying “Separation of church and state!” While this argument seems imposing at first, it is easily done away with. First, the separation of church and state is nowhere in the US Constitution and does not mean what most people have been brainwashed into thinking it means. These words are found in an 1802 letter from Thomas Jefferson to some Baptists who were afraid of that the federal government would remove their right to worship as they chose. Jefferson wrote them to say that the First Amendment of the Constitution has erected “a wall of separation” between church and state, meaning the federal government had no authority to interfere with the Baptist’s right to worship God as they chose.

Jefferson was right in his stance. The federal government had no power to tell people how to worship God.

Neither the Constitution nor Thomas Jefferson’s letter say anything about prohibiting the federal government from being conducted according to the law of God. The Constitution prohibits the federal government – not the state governments – from setting up an established state church. That’s all.

Second, one cannot practice civil government without first having a theory of civil government. That theory must come from somewhere, and the only authoritative word we have on civil government is the Scriptures, the 66 books of the Bible. The Bible tells us that civil government was created by God and lays down the rules by which it is to be conducted.

The Word of God is binding upon all civil rulers and they are accountable to God for their words and actions while in office as much as they in their private lives. The idea that a governor must lay aside his faith in Christ to conduct the business of the state is a lie fostered by the ACLU and other organizations who wish to replace the law of God with a law of their own choosing.

Closing Thoughts

I am well aware that what I have written in this short post is probably shocking to many people. Immersed in feminist philosophy as we are in the West, most people in our time have never questioned the propriety of woman suffrage and women office holders. It is my hope that this post will stimulate some to begin to compare their assumptions about women’s role in civil government to what the authoritative, infallible Word of God has to say.

Here in 2019, Americans face a phalanx of aggressive feminists running for president, yet as was the case in Knox’ day, there is near universal silence from the professing church on monstrous nature of gunaikokratia [the government of women]. Just to be clear, I am not saying that the members of “the Squad” are disqualified from holding office merely because they are socialists, or feminists, or are critical of America. Although I would not vote for a man who held their views, their individual beliefs are not what I’m questioning here. The real problem with “the Squad” is that they are women, and as the Bible logically implies that women are prohibited from voting in church elections and holding office in the church, so too does it imply that these same prohibition obtain with respect to civil government. .

Much more can and must be written on this subject. Lord willing, I shall do my part as we move through the 2020 Presidential election campaign.