Some comments on the distinct glories and callings of man and woman (male and female). I hope it is helpful for you all when we consider the calling of men and women and God's good design for each:
Women in exceptional circumstances, such as filling in for men lost in mass casualties due to war, may be pressed into duty out of sheer desperation and to fill the void as best they can. But that is the point -- female rule and leadership is extraordinary. While God may gift some women to rule, that is not typical of most women but rare and extraordinary.
It is one thing to say that a female ruler is a legitimate ruler (I would affirm that), but it is another thing to say that female rulers are desirable or the typical pattern and proper order that God has established (I would deny that, as I believe Scripture plainly does as well, along with our Reformed forefathers). Even Daneau, from what I have seen, would likewise grant the former but deny the latter, as he too saw it as extraordinary for women to be in public leadership in at least many capacities.
Surely the times of society were far better between men and women in the era of the Reformers and Puritans, especially following their reforms. How could we say that the relations between men and women are better today when we do not even know what a man or a woman is, with all the LGBTQ+ wickedness and confusion, when divorce rates are sky high, but getting married itself is more and more rare, etc.? Of course we know the issue with abortion and murdering of children. Women in Reformed denominations are being promoted in public capacities and on church staff, etc., which even if they are not yet ordained they are still teaching and in effect bearing unofficial authority. They are functional female officers, and even some so-called confessional conservative church officers are granting this in various ways because they have little to no positive accounting for how God has designed the female sex. Some will have women read the sermon text in the worship service, arguing that this isn't bearing authority or teaching. Some will even allow the women to lead prayers in the worship service. That really is all downstream of following the Egalitarian and feministic spirit of our age. The seminaries are full of this as well sadly. Even PCA Pastor Kevin DeYoung, who many believe is a rock solid confessional and conservative Reformed Minister, said this in one of his books: “At the very least, churches that do not allow women to speak in church under any circumstances are contradicting the instructions of Scripture. As a pastor, I’ve happily included women in the worship service to share a testimony, give an announcement, or offer a prayer”. He also said: "I believe most complementarian pastors could do a better job finding biblically allowable ways to use women in church gatherings to pray, to relate a story of God’s grace, or to share an encouraging word” (from page 62 of DeYoung's book Men and Women in the Church, for a good review/critique of DeYoung's book, go here: https://knowingscripture.com/.../book-review-men-and...).
The question comes down to what does Scripture and nature teach us when it comes to male and female. The commentators and Reformers are all engaging the Scriptures and sound reason flowing from observation of God's creation and the Scriptures. What we see in the Bible is God through His appointed human authors instructing women to be helpmeets and homemakers and child-bearers (Titus 2:3-5), even for widows to ordinarily remarry so that they do not become busybodies going from house to house (1 Tim. 5:3-16), etc. Certainly there are exceptions to this, but the bent of our society and even many of our Reformed churches today is to flatten this out (the Egalitarian impulse), or to teach and preach the exceptions as if they were the norm and ordinary occurrence, or at the very least to not preach gender specific piety as Scripture itself exhorts time and time again.
We do not need women rulers, but we desperately need women with a gentle and quiet spirit (1 Peter 3:4) that delight to serve their husbands and instruct their children, the very things the older women are to instruct the younger women to do, Titus 2:3-5:
"the older women likewise, that they be reverent in behavior, not slanderers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things— that they admonish the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be blasphemed."
This is not small matter. To reject this is to promote blaspheming of God's Word. The Greek word "homemaker" means to work at home, to keep the home, so we get the idea of housekeeping and the woman/wife to be domestic.
Now, where do we ever see in Scripture God calling women to pursue careers in the public sphere? Certainly, as has been said, women will sometimes work outside the home while still being homemakers and helpmeets to their husbands. But this is not what Scripture encourages or promotes for women. The Proverbs 31 woman sometimes goes outside the home to buy things and even sell the things she has made, but her center of gravity is always toward and for the home, and she plainly is a keeper of the home with all of her domestic labors, at the spinning wheel, rising early to feed her family, etc. We have situations like Lydia in Scripture who was a seller of purple, Acts 16:14, and she was faithful to God in this calling. In Acts 18:3 we see Aquila with his wife Priscila both "by occupation... were tentmakers" evidently operating their business out of their own home. It is no sin for women to work, to earn money, to help their husbands in the family business, etc. But the calling to the home and to be homemakers, helpmeets, etc., must take priority, as most women will have children, and even if not, they will serve in their father's home or the home of their husband.
Yet in our society and churches today we have no shortage of supply of women who want to climb the corporate ladder. Conversely, we have a desperate shortage of women who want to be faithful homemakers and housewives, which is what Scripture routinely exhorts and urges women toward. There are of course male sins in our culture and country today as well, though much of that is not taking masculine leadership as God calls men to do for the glory of God and good of others.
In short, what I am urging is what Scripture itself urges and is desperately needed in our modern day: for our society and churches to stop normalizing or glamorizing female Deborahs while tolerating or even celebrating male Baraks. This is destructive to God's order between the sexes, and is therefore destructive to man and woman, to marriages and families, and to society, and it seeps into our churches and corrodes them as well.
When a Deborah becomes necessary, the men have failed, as Barak had failed. When we begin to think that women in public leadership of our nation is just as good or equally desirable as men leading, we likewise have a great blindness that we need to awaken from. We should thank God for Deborah, but then try to correct course as quickly as possible rather than encourage or seek out the next Deborah. If God raised up a godly woman who recognized she shouldn't ordinarily be pursuing public leadership but in some strange providence ran and became President anyway, I can give thanks to God for that. But such a faithful woman in leadership would be shaming the men for failing to lead and would call women in the nation to be faithful in the home, and would acknowledge that her position in leadership was extraordinary. It also seems even more difficult to have a righteous woman run as President in our form of government as compared to a hereditary monarchy, where the rule would fall to women of that family line naturally when a male heir was not born.
My understanding is that historically in most European Monarchies, the male child would be given the rule over the female children, and only in cases where there was no male heir and only a female heir would a female rule. But we can simply look to Scripture and see that Israel and later Judah had no female Kings, only male Kings except for Queen Athaliah, who became Queen by murdering all the male heirs in 2 Kings 11, and it seems questionable (at best) whether she was rightly regarded as the Queen or just a tyrannical usurper. The rule of Kings in Israel/Judah was over the nation of Israel as a nation, and they served as civil magistrates, not as ecclesiastical authorities. The point being, it is legitimate to apply the male rule and succession as a normative pattern for male leadership in the civil realm still today. But this is simply in keeping with the distinct natures/sexes of men and women, as the head of woman is man (1 Cor. 11:3). The head directs and leads, the body follows.
We should not regard what God has ordained between men and women as "belittling" to women. It isn't. Women as homemakers, nurturers, mothers, and helpers is literally what God created women for, it is their glory and the chief blessings that they bring to this world, and we should praise God for such women. Unmarried women or women without children or widows likewise, by their feminine nature, are helpers and nurturers, and often delight to help out other mothers and instruct children. But we have all been catechized into believing these things are demeaning to women or holding them back, as if there is some sort of "injustice" that women are more restricted by God to the domestic sphere than men are. It is a difference and inequality of sorts, but it is not an injustice. In fact, submission is a pre-fall reality, for God made Eve from Adam to be a helper to him and under his headship, showing that submission to righteous authorities over us, including human authorities, is good and proper. Men are also under authority, whether it is their boss at work, their Elders, their civil rulers, etc. Authority used well and submitting to authorities well is how God has designed society, and we should not despise this but embrace it. When we have authority, we should use it well for God's glory and the good of those under our care. When we are under authority, we should not grumble or complain but serve those over us in all things lawful, with glad hearts, doing the best service we can, knowing that our authorities are imperfect sinners just as we are.
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