UPDATE 8/18/26
It is incredible that the very thing so many faithful pastors get in trouble for today regarding race was evidently taught by Rev. Appleton's own pastor, Rev. Heiple, who had a large hand as I understand it in getting Rev. Appleton deposed in the PCA.
Because we are all catechized by the Egalitarian impulse today, we recoil at noticing any real differences between the sexes, races or peoples, nations, cultures, etc. We are hardly allowed to notice meaningful differences between families or even individuals. But it is a sin to bear false witness, and so we must tell the truth, especially when it is socially unacceptable to do so.
If you do this, especially related to noticing real differences in these particular matters, you will quickly be suspected of things that are not logically entailed, such as absurd charges of denying the full humanity of some, or that some people are not fully made in the image of God. This is an incredibly wicked charge to level against someone when they deny this and are simply noting the real strengths and weaknesses of various peoples.
Just read Scripture, our own confessions, the Reformers, Puritans, the American Presbyterians like Hodge, Dabney, et. al. Read Calvin, Henry, Poole. Read Bavinck. Read our Westminster Larger Catechism on the 5th commandment, questions 123-133, which speaks of the sins and duties of superiors, inferiors, and equals. Basically any conservative Christian before 100 years ago recognized that there are real strengths and weaknesses and inequalities between the sexes, races, nations, and the cultures that they produce.
This Egalitarian age in extreme form says you cannot recognize different types or varieties at all. You can say there are apples, but not red, yellow, or green apples, or certainly not that some apples are hardier, tastier, and more valuable than others. A MacIntosh apple or Honeycrisp costs more than a Red Delicious (what a misnomer by the way) apparently for no good reason. This inequality must actually be an injustice! How demeaning to some apples that they are not prized as highly as others! These apples are being declared to not fully be made in the image of an apple!
I trust we see the absurdity of this. We do in the world of sports also. Major and minor leagues, first, second, and third string, unequal pay, that is all fine to say and to note of particular players. Well, unless you are talking about women, then it is an injustice how little they get paid. Or men who want to pretend to be women and compete in women's sports.
We really are circling the toilet, falling into insanity, and yet at the same time, Egalitarians are in a pickle. Women are so much physically inferior to men in strength and athleticism, yet our Feminist Egalitarian age cannot accept this. But then a woman gets her skull bashed in by a man whom everyone had to pretend is a woman in a boxing match. Further, they have to pretend that there really are no meaningful differences between men and women and so even if that is a man, so what, that doesn't mean he is actually better, faster, stronger, more skilled at MMA or basketball or football, etc., than the woman who was just reduced to a bloody pulp. It is madness upon madness! Women shouldn't be boxers and MMA fighters in general. They certainly shouldn't be subjected to a man claiming to be a woman who beats the tar out of her. Yet, they subject themselves to this.
Apply this to the work force and apply this to immigration. Importing third worlders who are simply culturally and typically intellectually and often morally weaker and inferior, who are foreigners with vastly different customs and habits, and drop millions upon millions of them into our nation. Then dare anyone to notice the obvious cultural incompatibilities, weaknesses and in some cases outright wickedness of these foreigners. Dare someone to complain about their Hindu Temples, Muslim Mosques, and Jewish synagogues. You will be called, even by some who claim to be conservative Christians or even pastors and elders, a wicked racist, full of sinful partiality, one who hates foreigners and denies they are made in the image of God, etc. If you also directly note that your own people or nation have been greatly blessed by the Lord and have greater strengths and are in fact a 1st world country and nation and people, and especially if you use the word "race" to describe this in any sense, you will be told that you have pitch black evil in your heart, that you are boasting and prideful. They will charge you with claiming that your strengths and superior blessings are not because of God's kindness but because of your own inherent and immutable racial, moral, or Spiritual superiority, etc. Even if you openly and outright deny this, many may still claim you are just a liar or "got caught" in your bigotry, or at least they will be highly suspicious of you still. The fact that you have always treated the women in your life well, especially your wife, and foreigners and those of other countries, races, cultures, etc., according to Scripture's requirements, won't matter to these slanderers who actually are wicked and bearing false witness.
This is largely because of the Egalitarian impulse prevalent today, which borders on saying it is even a sin to love your own wife and children more than the wife and children of your neighbor or someone in your church! These Egalitarians certainly will not like the idea of natural affection, or that Paul the Apostle had a stronger love, bond, and burden to see his own kinsmen according to the flesh converted to Christ (see Romans 9). And yet, none of this detracted from his deep love for those who were foreigners to him, Gentiles, and to whom he was called to be a missionary. It also did not make Paul blind to the sinfulness of himself or his own people and kin. He deplored his sin and the sin of his own people, kin, race, and nation. Yet he still loved them dearly with a natural affection. We should do the same for our own kin and country no matter what tribe, tongue, or nation we belong to, and we can and should do this without despising or failing to love all people and especially all Christians from every tribe, tongue, and nation. Further, Spiritual affection and bonds in Christ and the Church unite us together Spiritually across national, racial, and cultural lines, so that we love and pray for the Church universal, send out missionaries, and seek to aid fellow believers in dire distress all across the globe. But we should not do this to the neglect of our own family and household, and our own local church and congregation. The Lord still makes it clear what we must prioritize, and while prioritizing certainly creates an "inequality" of sorts, it is a just and righteous inequality. But the Egalitarian mind has no category for just inequalities. Virtually all inequalities are injustices to them.
This delusion has created all sorts of societal, political, sexual, and racial problems. Supposedly, Egalitarianism fixes all these. But it does not. It creates D.E.I. (diversity, equity, and inclusion) policies everywhere and in everything. The woman over the man, the foreigner over the native, all to "smash the patriarchy" and to smash the nasty White colonists or Southerners for their slavery, etc. This is most heinous and wicked when this is done in the name of Christianity. Yet this is what most all of us have been catechized into believing is "just" or "fair". Yet it is actually injustice and wickedness.
God's Word teaches inequality all over the place. Between the sexes, peoples, nations, cultures, governments, religions, and of course between God and man, the Creator and the creature. Some inequalities and differences are rooted in nature completely, such as male and female, as God made such this way from the beginning to differently reflect His image and likeness, Gen. 1:27. Other differences providentially developed and emerged over time, and ebb and flow over generations. Racial, national, and cultural differences are in this category, and as Scripture says, any nation or race or people improve through righteousness as they repent of their sin and turn to Christ for salvation, but also decline through sin and rebellion and idolatry, Proverbs 14:34. This is over many generations and is codified in the 10 commandments themselves, that God visits the iniquities of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate Him, but shows mercy to the 1000th to those who love Him and keep His commandments. But even in terms of natural aptitudes and capacities, both nature and nurture have impact, and as man is body and soul and these mutually interact and re-inforce one another, they can both improve a people or lead to their decline over generations. This is in part the nature vs. nurture discussion.
This has to be particularized as well. Know thyself. What are your strengths and weaknesses? What are your besetting sins and temptations? Where has God especially gifted you? What opportunities do you have? These are all important questions to answer so you can soberly assess if the Lord has given you 1, 2, or 5 talents, as the parable of the talents teaches us. Further, no matter the degree of blessing and giftedness you have, whether of a natural or spiritual kind, consider what areas are those talents in, and where are they lacking? Inequality is actually necessary for charity, generosity, to help others and to be helped by others.
The body of Christ is comprised of different parts, of different and unequal parts, all for the good purpose of serving one another, and the stronger should use their strengths well to help care for the weaker rather than boasting, and the weaker should use what they do have well for God's glory and not grumble like the man who buried his one and only talent and grumbled against God. That led to God taking away his one talent and giving it to the one who has five and doubled it to have 10! Now he had 11. And Christ taught that even what little the lazy and ungrateful has will be taken from him, and the one who has much and does much good with it for the Lord's glory will be given even more. Jesus was an anti-Egalitarian. We all should be if we want to be biblical and faithful Christians.
And none of this denies the glorious reality that we are all one in Christ, in His kingdom of sheer, sovereign grace, whether male or female, Jew or Greek, slave or free. But the devil uses Egalitarianism to make us think that the above does deny this Spiritual oneness and Spiritual equality found in Christ.
*END UPDATE*
Was it John Calvin or Rick Appleton who was recently deposed from pastoral office?
1. On Women’s Inherent Inferiority and Subjection
Expanded Quote:
“On this account all women are born, that they may acknowledge themselves inferior in consequence of the superiority of the male sex. … For the woman was made subject to the man, as appears from the order of creation, and from the punishment inflicted on her for having seduced the man. … 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.”
Full Citation:
John Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians, translated by John Pringle, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1848), vol. 1, commentary on 1 Corinthians 11:10.
(Also in modern reprints and at CCEL.)
2. On Prohibition of Women Teaching or Holding Public Authority
Expanded Quote:
“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. … For there is no absurdity in the supposition, that a woman should teach in a private capacity, provided she does not usurp the office that belongs to men. … But the Apostle here excludes them from the office of teaching, because it would be inconsistent with the subjection to which they are called.”
Full Citation:
John Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians, translated by John Pringle, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1848), vol. 2, commentary on 1 Corinthians 14:34–35.
(Also in CCEL and standard modern editions of Calvin’s New Testament Commentaries.)
3. On Women as “Accessory” to Men and the “Madness” of Female Rule
Expanded Quote:
“Yet consider now, whether women are not quite past sense and reason, when they want to rule over men. In a word, it is madness. For, were men made for women? It is true that today men are as channels through which God causes His grace to stream down upon women. … Yet St. Paul has an eye here to the beginning of the creation, where it was said that it was not good for the man to be alone, and that he needed someone at hand who would always be ready to help. Since God was thinking of the man, it certainly follows that the woman is only an accessory. And why? Because she was only created for the sake of man, and she must therefore direct her whole life toward him. She must confess, ‘I am not supposed to be without direction here, not knowing my purpose and station. Rather, I am obliged by God, if I am married, to serve my husband, and render him honor and reverence. And, if I am not married, I am bound to walk in all soberness and modesty, cognizant that men have the higher rank, and that they must rule, and that the woman who disregards this forgets the law of nature and perverts what should be observed as God commands.’ This then [is] the place to which St. Paul brings back women.”
Full Citation:
John Calvin, Men, Women, and Order in the Church: Three Sermons by John Calvin, translated and edited (Dallas: Presbyterian Heritage Publications, 1992), from the sermon(s) on order in the church (drawing on 1 Corinthians 11 and 14).
(This is a modern English translation of Calvin’s original French sermons.)
4. On Creation Order, Eve’s Deception, and Resulting Subjection (1 Timothy 2)
Expanded Quote:
“For Adam was first formed, then Eve. … And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. … He assigns two reasons why women ought to be subject to men; because not only did God enact this law at the beginning, but he also inflicted it as a punishment on the woman. … Because she had given fatal advice, it was right that she should be deprived of the liberty of teaching. … By these words Paul does not mean that Adam was not entangled by the same deceitfulness of the devil, but that the cause or source of the transgression proceeded from Eve.”Full Citation:
John Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistles to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon, translated by William Pringle (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1856), commentary on 1 Timothy 2:13–14.
(Also available via CCEL.)
5. On Female Rule as a Deviation from the Order of Nature (Letter)
Expanded Quote:
“Two years ago John Knox asked of me, in a private conversation, what I thought about the government of women. I candidly replied, that as it was a deviation from the original and proper order of nature, it was to be ranked, no less than slavery, among the punishments consequent upon the fall of man; but that there were occasionally women so endowed, that the singular good qualities which shone forth in them, made it evident that they were raised up by divine authority; either that God designed by such examples to condemn the inactivity of men, or for the better setting forth his own glory. … I came at length to this conclusion, that since both by custom and public consent and long practice it has been established, that realms and principalities may descend to females by hereditary right, it did not appear to me necessary to move the question…”
Full Citation:
John Calvin to William Cecil, 1559. Published in collections such as Letters of John Calvin (compiled editions, e.g., Jules Bonnet or Baker Book House reprints of Selected Works of John Calvin: Tracts and Letters, vol. 7). Specific reference: Calvin to Cecil, 1559, regarding female government.
6. On Women’s Proneness to Vanity and Immodest Dress
Expanded Quote:
“In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with broided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array. … He intended to embrace the opportunity of correcting a vice to which women are almost always prone, and which perhaps at Ephesus, being a city of vast wealth and extensive merchandise, especially abounded. That vice is — excessive eagerness and desire to be richly dressed. … He wishes therefore that their dress should be regulated by modesty and sobriety; for luxury and immoderate expense arise from a desire to make a display either for the sake of pride or of departure from chastity. … He expressly censures certain kinds of superfluity, such as curled hair, jewels, and golden rings; not that the use of gold or of jewels is expressly forbidden, but that, wherever they are prominently displayed, these things commonly draw along with them the other evils which I have mentioned, and arise from ambition or from want of chastity as their source.”
Full Citation:
John Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistles to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon, translated by William Pringle (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1856), commentary on 1 Timothy 2:9–10.
(Also in CCEL.)
7. Additional Context from Genesis (Creation of Woman and the Fall)
Expanded Quote (Creation):
“It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. … Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. … He now adds, all the host of them, by which he signifies that the world was furnished with all its garniture. … Therefore, after he has related historically what God had done, he also demonstrates the end of the divine institution. The sum of the whole is, that among the offices pertaining to human society, this is the principal, and as it were the most sacred, that a man should cleave unto his wife.”
Expanded Quote (Fall and Subjection):
“Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. … In order that the majesty of the judge may shine the more brightly, God uses no long disputation. … He mentions the woman on this account, because, as she had yielded to the subtlety of the devils and being first deceived, had drawn her husband into the participation of her ruin, so she had peculiar need of consolation.”
Full Citation:
John Calvin, Commentary on Genesis, translated by John King, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1847), commentary on Genesis 2:18–24 (creation) and Genesis 3:16 (the Fall and resulting subjection).
(Also widely available via CCEL.)
Yes, this list was created with the help of GROK. Go to the sources. I have over the years verified many of these quotations from Calvin. Further, any ONE single one of these would be enough to likely get you deposed from much of NAPARC today.
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