Then the day came in 1141 AD when all their treasure was threatened. An enemy army had surrounded the castle and demanded the fortress, the fortune, and the lives of the men within. There was nothing to do but surrender.

Although the conquering commander had set a condition for the safe release of all women and children, the wives of Weinsberg refused to leave without having one of their own conditions met, as well. They demanded that they be allowed to fill their arms with as many possessions as they could carry out with them. Knowing that the women couldn’t possibly make a dent in the massive fortune, their request was honored.

When the castle gates opened the army outside was brought to tears. Each woman had carried out her husband.

The wives of Weinberg, indeed, were aware of the riches the castle held.

(now that’s love)

In Titus 2:3-5 the apostle Paul charges the older women in the church to teach the younger women “to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.” The instruction for women to be “keepers at home” generally has been understood by the church as teaching that the sphere of a married woman’s work is her home. This understanding is reflected by the Puritan commentator Matthew Poole, who interpreted the phrase to mean: “housewives, not spending their time gadding abroad, but in looking to the affairs of their own families.” (^[1]) The Christian woman as a housewife, looking diligently to the affairs of her family, was the standard in Puritan New England:

In seventeenth century New England no respectable person questioned that a woman’s place was in the home. By the laws of Massachusetts as by those of England a married woman could hold no property of her own. When she became a wife, she gave up everything to her husband and devoted herself exclusively to managing his household. Henceforth her duty was to “keep at home, educating her children, keeping and improving what is got by the industry of the man.”(^[2])

However, this view went beyond the Puritans and was the perspective of all branches of the church and a central aspect of Western Christian culture. For example, Lenski, the eminent Lutheran commentator, stated that the phrase “keepers at home” indicates domestic responsibility and that the home is the place of a married woman’s work; she is a “housekeeper” who dispenses “all good things in this domain.” (^[3])

The article is thoughtful kind and uses scripture to explain this very basic Christian doctrine.

Wherefore, let men that receive of women authority, honour, or office, be most assuredly persuaded, that in so maintaining that usurped power, they declare themselves enemies to God. If any think, that because the realms and estates thereof have given their consents to a woman, and have established her and her authority, that therefore it is lawful and acceptable before God, let the same men remember what I have said before: to wit, that God cannot approve the doing nor consent of any multitude, concluding anything against his word and ordinance; and therefore they must have a more assured defence against the wrath of God than the approbation and consent of a blinded multitude, or else they shall not be able to stand in the presence of a consuming fire. That is, they must acknowledge that the regiment of a woman is a thing most odious in the presence of God. They must refuse to be her officers, because she is a traitress and rebel against God. And finally, they must study to repress her inordinate pride and tyranny to the uttermost of their power.

http://www.swrb.ab.ca/newslett/actualNLs/firblast.htm

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. (On 1 Cor. 11:10, Calvin Translation Society edition of Commentaries.)

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. (Comments on 1 Cor. 14:34.)

Calvin was a man of clear understanding now wasn’t he?

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

It seems that the we aren’t the only folks on the net who do not appreciate theological modernity.

I will make your commentary study a little easier; the quick answer is that the view that you propose here is at best about forty years old, originating in Liberal universities and mainline theological seminaries in the late 1960’s and filtering into evangelical ones in the 1970’s (because we evangelicals love to have our pastors earn degrees from prestigious academic institutions even if such institutions hate God and His Word). I know, because you see, I was there when it occurred. I was at Bethel College and Bethel Seminary in the late 1970’s when this “new view” of “mutual submission” first became popular. It was a self conscious attempt on the part of certain faculty members to “adjust” evangelical theology to make it appealing to the growing wave of feminists in the church. The fact that the term “submit” (Greek “hupotasso”) which means to be “placed under” cannot possibly be made to mean “mutual submission” was ignored; certain men wanted to adjust evangelical theology to a new generation which had a priori assumed the “truth” of feminism and therefore had to construct some kind of Biblical basis. This was little different from the Temperance movement of the 19^th century who assumed a priori that alcohol was the cause of all social ills and then created a twisted, distorted exegesis to insist that the wine in the Bible is really just grape juice; even though historically, linguistically and culturally this was pure invented nonsense. But just like the “all wine is really just grape juice” so has “we are really supposed to submit to one another so nobody, especially husbands have any authority.”

The rest of Absire’s tidy response if found on his www.christian-civilization.org website.

(not to be confused with Slandrew umm Andrew Sandlin’s Christian Culture website)

The entire issue was summed up in a brilliant quote  by Chesterton at the start of the Bayly article.

It is the final sign of imbecility in a people that it calls cats dogs and describes the sun as the moon–and is very particular about the preciseness of these pseudonyms.  To be wrong, and to be carefully wrong, that is the definition of decadence.  The disease called aphasia, in which people begin by saying tea when they mean coffee, commonly ends in their silence. -G. K. Chesterton

I highly recommend the entire article.

Doug Wilson dishes on gender roles…

When it comes to 1 Cor. 11:3, where we learn that God is the head of Christ, Christ is the head of man, and man is the head of woman, Wright goes with the popular (and to my mind, evasive) reading that head here means source, like the head of a river. But apart from the special pleading aspect of this, it appears to me to be special pleading that actually backfires on the egalitarian. If headship here means covenantal or federal headship, as I would want to argue, then the headship of the man incorporates and represents the woman, allowing for and requiring a perichoretic equality between the sexes. In a Trinitarian framework, submission does not mean inferiority. But this language of headship as source, when it comes to the sexes, is thin ice indeed. Taken too woodenly, this idea would lead us toward an Arian Christology, and a Muslim view of women. In other words, egalitarians need to recognize that their reading of 1 Cor. 11:3 is more conducive to the mentality of raw patriarchy than is the covenantal and representative reading. Submission to a source is more problematic than submission to a covenant representative.

 Click here for the rest of the article

A pastor who preaches on family roles is, well, teaching on family roles. it doesn’t mean he is teaching against street preaching or missionaries. See, wasn’t that easy!

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Nancy Wilson has some interesting things to say concerning women in the ministry. Here’s a great quote:

The first question to ask and answer is, “Who is this woman’s husband?” Next we must ask many subsidiary questions. Is she fulfilling her ministry to him? Is he her priority? Is she helping him? Is her house in order? Is he leading her in this ministry? Is her identity as a Christian woman centered around her relationship to her husband?

If the answer to any of these is “no,” then her ministry is likely independent of her husband, and it is much like a separate career; but because it is “Christian,” it is somehow seen as a valid ministry. In contrast, because Scripture clearly teaches that the husband is the head of the wife, a Christian woman in ministry should clearly be seen as under her husband’s visible headship. In other words, her ministry should be visibly connected to him.

You can read the rest of Nancy Wilson’s article here .

Her husband Doug has an old fence-like article here.

But the masculinist egalitarian tends to assume that the broader relationship between men and women is foremost. Because of this assumption of the primacy of men generally over women generally, he assumes that every male should be prepared to lead any home, and that every female should be prepared to step into any marriage ready to follow. He also necessarily assumes that the resultant families are roughly equal in ability, status, etc .

In the hierarchical and biblical view, the relationship of women to men is first familial , and then as a consequence, a larger (and very complex) cultural and societal relationship between the sexes emerges. This means that wives are to submit to, and provide help to, their own husbands (and no one else). As a result of this submission in countless families, a larger patriarchal society will emerge. However, this patriarchal society will necessarily contain a number of women who are far more intelligent, educated, and “stronger” than numerous men. No society is truly patriarchal unless it contains a significant number of noble women, “stronger” in many ways than a number of the men.

 

Wilson does an admirable job in that article explaining the meaning of “weaker vessel” and a well defined view of submission.  I have always enjoyed Wilson’s writings on the family.

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A friend of mine sent me this link by a guy named Taylor West who links to a session at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary that apparently asks “Is patriarchy a gospel issue?” Taylor says yes (I can’t wait to listen).

 

Dr. Russell Moore says yes here (warning, this is an hour long message). I couldn’t agree more.

This is the best message I’ve ever heard on how patriarchy is a gospel issue and when it is rejected, the gospel is rejected. As a Presbyterian, I take issue with his take on infant baptism (Moore is a Baptist), but since we both read the text in the exact same way on the bigger issue of what headship is and how it relates to what Christ done on the cross, I love this man. Dr. Moore is so astute and unashamed on this issue that I am beginning to think he may be the best man in the States today speaking to the issue. By the way, John Piper, as wonderful as he is on the issue, pales in comparison to Moore on this.

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In response to the ladies across the way who ask the other day why us patriarchs don’t worry about training our boys to be leader types I present for your consideration.

You can register here

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Lastly I leave you with another quote from Dougwils.com

We live in an egalitarian age, an age which sees every form of subordination or submission as a kind of degradation. It is therefore customary for me to think carefully about my use of the word submission in a wedding ceremony—were there any radical feminists who were invited to the wedding and so on? The temptation is to think that radical feminists are the ones who need to have this kind of thing explained to them. But it would be closer to the truth to say that conservative Christians need to hear these things again and again, and it is because we have not lived in accordance with the Scriptures on these issues that we even have radical feminists to begin with.