A year or two ago, a well-known pulpiteer in one of North America’s historic Presbyterian churches made the public claim that John Calvin did not believe what John Knox wrote here in his First Blast of the Trumpet. He said Calvin taught the Creation Order of Adam first then Eve applied only in the home and Church. Nowhere outside the home and Church.

Of course, he was wrong as are all those who abuse Calvin to cover their betrayal of the doctrine of sexuality declared in God’s Word.

We made an effort to document to this brother the error he was promoting, asking him for any Calvin citations supporting his own claims. He couldn’t produce a single one, but neither did he correct his deception.

Over the course of the past few decades this has become a common deception practiced by feminists. God’s people have been told the relationship between sexuality and authority are of no consequence anywhere other than the privacy of Christian homes and churches. But this doctrine of the Creation Order has suffered serious attenuation even in the Church, and it’s on life-support in many of the most conservative Christian homes.

It would be a happy day if this book you hold in your hands expositing Scripture’s teaching on the universal application of God’s Order of Creation convinced God’s people today to turn away from the feminist rebellion corrupting our homes, churches, and world. Sadly though, many will dismiss the doctrine of Scripture laid out by Knox having been deceived by feminists who say John Calvin disagreed with him.

Knowing the ubiquity of this lie, we pause here to address it briefly, documenting John Calvin’s agreement with Knox’s thesis. To that end, we provide the following. First, three primary sources from Calvin; and second, a summary statement by C. S. Lewis. First, Calvin himself, beginning with an excerpt from his commentary on 1 Timothy:

A woman must quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness. But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve. (1 Timothy 2:11-13)

If any one bring forward, by way of objection, Deborah (Judges 4:4) and others of the same class, of whom we read that they were at one time appointed by the command of God to govern the people, the answer is easy. Extraordinary acts done by God do not overturn the ordinary rules of government, by which he intended that we should be bound. Accordingly, if women at one time held the office of prophets and teachers, and that too when they were supernaturally called to it by the Spirit of God, He who is above all law might do this; but, being a peculiar case, this is not opposed to the constant and ordinary system of government. (John Calvin’s comments on 1 Timothy 2:11-13)

Next, a letter John Calvin wrote his fellow reformer, Heinrich Bullinger, concerning their discussion of this issue with John Knox:

Most willingly I looked over the answer which you gave to the Scotsman. He had talked over these matters with me before he came among you. As I had freely exposed to him in familiar conversation my opinion, he did not press the subject any further, and not even after his return, did he ask me to communicate to him my ideas in writing. The substance of what I expressed orally moreover tallied with what you had written. …About the government of women I expressed myself thus: Since it is utterly at variance with the legitimate order of nature, it ought to be counted among the judgments with which God visits us; and even in this matter his extraordinary grace is sometimes very conspicuous, because to reproach men for their sluggishness, he raises up women endowed not only with a manly but a heroic spirit, as in the case of Deborah we have an illustrious example. But though a government of this kind seems to me nothing else than a mere abuse, yet I gave it as my solemn opinion, that private persons have no right to do anything but to deplore it. (Letter CCCXLVIII from John Calvin to Heinrich Bullinger; Geneva, 28 April 1554)

Then, this letter from John Calvin to William Cecil:

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.]

C. S. Lewis sums up the Reformers’ discomfort at Knox’s jeremiad against Queen Elizabeth’s governance in his First Blast of the Trumpet and yet their agreement that women’s governance of men was “contrary to nature and divine law”:

It was embarrassing because in a certain sense nearly everyone (except regnant queens) agreed with Knox. Everyone knew that it was contrary to natural and divine law that women should rule men . . . Calvin knew as well as Knox… Bullinger thought the same… No one wanted the thing to be said, yet no conscientious doctor could answer it in the resounding style which alone would satisfy Queen Elizabeth. No woman likes to have her social position defended as one of the inevitable results of the Fall.” (C. S. Lewis, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, pp. 199-200.)

It is true that Knox’s application of God’s Creation Order to England’s queens left other reformers squirming. Knox was under female civil magistrates—Queens Mary and Elizabeth. Calvin was under male civil magistrates. How to apply the biblical doctrine of sexuality to one’s own time and political context was a dicey matter then as it is still today. There’s plenty of room for disagreement without condemning one another for our individual approach.

Still, the declaration of the truth of Scripture on the subject of the Order of Creation is both necessary and good. To that end we have provided this exposition by John Knox of the universal doctrine of male headship. Disagree with him in the application of this doctrine, but not the doctrine itself. As Lewis says, this is the Protestant reformers’ universal conviction of the meaning of Adam being created first, then Eve.