Thursday, December 07, 2017

Knox - the ultimate male chauvinist

Notes for a talk to IPC teenagers on the subject of women in the church.

John Knox, the most famous Scottish Reformer, was born near Edinburgh in 1505. He went to his local school and then to university in St Andrews, before becoming a deacon and a priest in the (Roman Catholic) Church.
From 1542, Scotland was governed by Regent Arran as Mary Queen of Scots [link to First Reformation – Monarchs – Mary QOS] was still a baby. Arran benefited reform in Scotland in a number of ways. Firstly, he passed a law that allowed people to read the Bible in their own language. He then appointed the Protestant Thomas Guillame to preach around Scotland, and it was through his preaching that John Knox was converted. The biggest influence on Knox’s life however was George Wishart.
After Wishart’s death in 1546, Knox taught the sons of a number of Protestants who had captured St Andrews Castle. Some of those in the castle called Knox to become their minister. At this he burst into tears and ran off to his room because of what a responsibility he knew it would be. A few days later however he accepted the call. In the summer of 1547 French warships attacked the castle. Knox was taken prisoner, kept aboard in one of the ships and forced to row it in chains with other galley slaves. After 19 months however he was set free, and went to England where Archbishop Cranmer was working to promote the Reformation, and he was appointed as a preacher [in Berwick]. He attacked the Roman Catholic mass as idolatry because it was ‘invented by the brain of man’ and not commanded by God. In 1551 he was invited to live in London and preach before king Edward VI.
In 1553, the Roman Catholic Mary I became Queen. Knox was now in danger so he left for Europe. He became minister in Frankfurt in Germany and then in Geneva in Switzerland where John Calvin was also a minister. In between he returned to Scotland to get married and preach, and was surprised at how far the teaching of the Reformers was spreading.
In 1559, he came back to Scotland for good. The Scottish people were now ready to end Roman Catholicism once and for all, after the death of Walter Mill. Knox began to preach throughout Scotland, and God saved many people. In the autumn, he became minister at St Andrews. The people in St Andrews had been convinced by Knox’s preaching and had taken all the pictures and images out of the church.
1560 was the key year in the First Scottish Reformation. The Scottish Parliament passed laws getting rid of the mass and the Pope’s power in Scotland. Knox and five other men, all called John, wrote important documents such as the Scots Confession of Faith, which explained what the church believed. In the summer, Knox became minister in Edinburgh. In December, the first General Assembly met in Edinburgh.
From 1567 until he was assassinated three years later, Scotland was ruled by the Protestant Regent Moray. The second Reformation Parliament met in the same year and passed more laws in favour of the Reformation. The years from 1560 onwards saw worship simplified, evangelism, care of the poor and more education, so the ordinary people could read the Bible. Instead of the outward forms of Roman Catholicism, public worship was now based around reading, preaching and singing from God’s word.

Knox continued preaching for the rest of his life and died in 1572. When he was buried, it was said that ‘Here lies a man who in his life never feared the face of man’.

The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstruous Regiment of Women[1] is a polemical work by the Scottish reformer John Knox, published in 1558. It attacks female monarchs, arguing that rule by females is contrary to the Bible. It is clear however that the use of "regiment" or "regimen" meant "rule" and should not be confused with "regiment" as in a section of an armed force.
The book was written anonymously from Geneva, Switzerland, against the female sovereigns of his day, particularly Mary of Guise, Dowager Queen of Scotland and regent to her daughter Mary, Queen of Scots, and Queen Mary I of England. Knox, a staunch Protestant Reformer, opposed the Catholic queens on religious grounds, and used them as examples to argue against female rule over men generally. Building on his premise that, according to Knox's understanding of the Bible, "God, by the order of his creation, has [deprived] woman of authority and dominion" and from history that "man has seen, proved, and pronounced just causes why it should be", he argued the following with regard to the specific role of women bearing authority:
 ‘repugnant to nature, that the blind shall be appointed to lead and conduct such as do see? That the weak, the sick, and impotent persons shall nourish and keep the whole and strong, and finally, that the foolish, mad and phrenetic shall govern the discrete, and give counsel to such as be sober of mind? And such be all women, compared to man in bearing of authority. For their sight in civil rule, is but blindness: their strength, weakness: their counsel, foolishness: and judgement, frenzy, if it be rightly considered’
His diatribe against female rulers had negative consequences for him when Elizabeth I succeeded her half-sister Mary I as Queen of England; Elizabeth was a supporter of the Protestant cause, but took offence at Knox's words about female sovereigns. Her opposition to him personally became an obstacle to Knox's direct involvement with the Protestant cause in England after 1559.

Knox was a man of his day. He had good practical reasons for his views but he was wrong. As a convinced Thatcherite and admirer of our Queen I do not believe women are unfit to rule. Elizabeth I proved it too.I believe that God has put man as head in two spheres, the family and the church. There is in those two areas a male headship of authority. The husband is the head of the wife and Christ the head of the church gave authority to males to head the church as apostles and elders.Note, I am not saying the man is always head of the women but the husband is the head of the wife.  Listen to Paul/

1 Timothy 2:12 - I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. 

Corinthians 11:3 - But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God.

Ephesians 1:22 - And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church.

Ephesians 5:23 - For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Saviour.

Colossians 2:10 - and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority.

Headship means rule, authority in family and church. It is a headship of love as Christ id head of the church.

Note a wife is to promise submission to her husband not obedience. Submission implies no inferiority for Jesus came back from the temple and submitted to his parents. And he who is eternally the Son, co-equal with father and Spirit, submitted to his father for our salvation.  This is why we are complementarians not egalitarians, why we have only men as elders.

No comments: