Theology in the Raw - 771: #771 - Acts, the Church, and Women in Ministry: Kristen and Osvaldo Padilla

Episode Date: December 23, 2019

Preston and Ozzie did their Ph.D.’s together at Aberdeen University, where Ozzie wrote a brilliant dissertation on the role that speeches from non-Christians play in the book of Acts. Fast forward several years and Ozzie is teaching at Beeson Divinity School in Alabama and meets his (now) wife, Kristen, who was finishing her M.Div. Both Kristen and Ozzie are writers, leaders, and passionate about ministry. Both grew up believing that only men can be church leaders/preachers, but have both shifted their view. This podcast explores why. Support Preston Support Preston by going to patreon.com Connect with Preston Twitter | @PrestonSprinkle Instagram | @preston.sprinkle Check out his website prestonsprinkle.com If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review.

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. I have on the show today a very dynamic and brilliant and godly dynamic duo. I have on the show today Dr. Osvaldo Padilla and his wife, Kristen, or shall I say Kristen Padilla and her husband, Dr. Osvaldo Padilla. uh, Kristen Padilla and her husband, Dr. Osvaldo Padilla. Uh, Osvaldo is a professor of divinity at Beeson Divinity School. Me and Ozzy, I know him by Ozzy, his official name is Osvaldo, but, um, me and Ozzy go way back. We, uh, met at Aberdeen University where we were both doing our PhDs in New Testament. And I'll never forget that Ozzy came in after me and finished before me. Now it took me a little over three years to do my PhD. So Ozzy completed his PhD in just over two years. And all of us other, other PhD students were like, what in the world just happened? This dude just came in and wrote a dynamite dissertation in two

years on the speeches of non-Christians in the book of Acts. And we talked a little bit about the significance of that. And it's actually pretty intriguing to look at the theological role that the speeches from non-Christians, the theological role that those speeches play in the overarching theology of Acts. It's actually really fascinating. Not only did he finish his PhD, but then he published his dissertation in the highest, most respected dissertation series, if you want to call it that from Cambridge university press, like they only accept like a couple different dissertations a year to publish and his was one of them. So anyway, all let's say Ozzie is absolutely brilliant and his wife is

absolutely brilliant. Um, uh, Kristen Padilla is an author, a speaker. She's written a book called Now That I'm Called, a guide for women discerning a call to ministry. And as the title suggests, that is a topic that we cover fairly extensively in this conversation. Both Ozzie and Kristen were raised with the view that women cannot serve in leadership positions or speaking positions at a church. And that's the view I grew up with. It's the view that I'm still not completely done away with, if you want to say it like that. As many of you know, I'm just constantly just kind of working through that question and thinking through and looking at different arguments and going back to scripture. And I just, I just want to make sure I'm understanding scripture as clearly as I can in terms of does God desire that females, women would serve in positions of leadership in churches? And I know it's a huge debate and it gets all, gets people riled up.

But anyway, we dig into that. And Ozzie and Kristen are two amazing people to help guide a conversation in that topic. So without further ado, please welcome for the first time only the dynamic duo, Ozzy and Kristen. Hey guys, how are you guys doing? Hey, Preston.

Good to see you. I don't usually have two guests on. I don't know if I've ever had two guests on, let alone a married couple, let alone a kind of theological duo. So I'm super excited about this. As I said, or maybe I said in the intro, I don't know. I haven't recorded the intro yet, even though people listening to this have already heard the intro, which is really weird. But Ozzy and I go way back uh to our Aberdeen days and um I uh whenever I tell people Ozzy it usually is um has to do with I think you were the the fastest PhD student at least in my time at Aberdeen I think you finished in just over

two years or something is that right what was your total out the door time it was around that it was just too cold there okay and i like i like my scottish friends a lot but uh but not the weather so i showed up in january coming from southern california it was a literal slap in the face getting off that airplane. I'm like, you gotta be kidding me. This is unbelievable. I came from Chicago and it was in September and it was, I remember when I was landing it was nice and sunny and I thought, Oh, the weather is going to be beautiful. Yeah. it was nice and sunny and I thought oh the weather the weather's gonna be beautiful yeah and then uh you get off the plane and it is it's like 45 and super already in September September and January aren't too different in Aberdeen so why don't we uh Ozzy let's start

with you um and then we'll talk about how you and uh Kristen got to know each other so uh you did a PhD at Aberdeen uh specializing in Luke Acts or no Acts in particular um can you talk briefly about your dissertation topic and then also your academic journey going to Trinity and now to uh Beeson let's just sum that up to get us get. Yeah, so one of the reasons I did finish a little faster is because when I went to Aberdeen, I already had a pretty well-defined topic for a PhD dissertation. And it was generally on the speeches and the Book of Acts. There are all those sermons that we hear of Peter and Paul preaching. all those sermons that we hear of Peter and Paul preaching.

And I decided to do a study on what non-Christians say in the book of Acts. And it turned out okay. So I had a great time there. And one of the highlights was meeting guys like you and Joey Dodson, who I know has been in your podcast before. And then after that, I went to Switzerland to the University of Lausanne. One of the reasons for that was to get my French to be a little better and also to study with Professor Daniel Marguerat. Daniel Marguerat, who was a francophone act scholar. And I spent a wonderful six months in Switzerland.

And after that, I had the opportunity to be at Trinity Tets up in Deerfield. And then in 2008, Beeson made an offer I couldn't resist. And I came here, and it, just so over 10 years now. And it's here that I met Kristen. Uh, she was in her, she was not my student. I always have to clarify that.

I thought she was, I was going to ride you guys. No, no, but she was an M, an M.D. student in her last semester. Uh, and we just became friends.

And then, uh, when she graduated, graduated, the friendship continued. And then it's been quite a few years now when we have one boy, his name is Phillip. He's eight years old. You guys are coming up on almost, has it been all 10 years? Have you celebrated? Wow. That is crazy. That is so life really does fly by real quick. Going back to your dissertation. Um, I would love from, from my audience, the part of my audience that may not be as maybe in tune with the theology of speeches. So, um, most people would kind of assume that, okay, I'm reading Luke record a speech in

the book of Acts, and he's recording what words were said in that speech, okay? But the speeches also reflect on some level the theology of Acts, the point that Luke is trying to get across. I know both of you are evangelicals, you believe in the authority of Scripture and everything. Can you maybe unpack just briefly how it's okay that, say, a biblical writer can also maybe rework or frame a speech in a way that conveys a theological point that he's trying to say, while also accurately representing the history of what was actually said. Does that make sense? Yeah, I think that's a good question. Well, so, you know, the way that people write history today is not the same as history was written in the past. So, for example, today we have quotation marks to separate the speech of the reporter from the speech of a character, say, in a newspaper feature or something like that.

But in the ancient world, you didn't have quotation marks. So that already blurs the line between direct speech and indirect speech. The second thing is that speeches in the ancient world were summaries at best. At best, there were summaries of what speakers said, and the author who's reporting the speech, it was okay for the author to put the words in his own language, his own words. Now, this may come as a shock to a lot of people, but the majority of ancient historians actually did not care about so much about what the speaker said. It was more, when you reported a speech, it was more to show off what a good stylist you were as an author.

There were actually only a minority of scholars or historians in the ancient world who gave a summary of what the speaker said. So one of the things I argue in my book is that Luke was one of those people, the author of Luke and Acts. He cares about what Jesus said, because he says he's the Lord. He cares about what the apostles said, because they are the sent ones from the Lord. And so he puts their speech in summary form.

So, for example, if you read the sermon at Athens, the Areopagus speech, I'm sure that would have taken like an hour or two. But if you sit down with your Bible, it's going to take you at most five minutes to read it. That's because Luke is summarizing in his own words what Paul actually said. And so by doing that, especially by using language that would go along with Luke's theology, that is one of the ways that he's able to weld together the theology of Paul. Let's remember Luke was a follower of Paul. Paul was, in a way, his theological hero.

So that's the way that he can weld together his own thoughts, his own theology with Paul's words. he can weld together his own thoughts, his own theology with Paul's words. So history, it's still about what happened. It's still about what people said and did. But how it was reported is different than today. Today, we will go to the internet and find the, what's the right word here? Transcript? Yeah, thank you. The transcript. Well, tell me about the speech that so-and-so gave.

I said, well, go to the internet and find the transcript. In the ancient world, that wasn't the case. You didn't have that technology. So authors, at best, gave a summary of what the speaker said. So the Mars Hill speech, you're saying if we had a went into a time machine and were there at mars hill i was just there this last summer at this supposed location um we would have heard well on the one hand we would have heard something quite well let me say different. And yet if we took Paul

and sat him down and had him read our Greek New Testament and Luke's summary of Paul's speech, and Paul was to look at how Luke summarized it, Paul would say, yeah, that's an accurate summary of part of my speech or maybe the main gist of my like he would be he wouldn't look at luke's version and say wow you jerk you totally misrepresented me like he would say no this this is representation but i mean if we went back in time we would have heard something like you said i mean obviously 10 times longer whatever and different words maybe even different styles and different phrases. Yeah. I mean, just when you compare that particular speech to Paul's letters, there is some language that you find in Paul's letters

that you also find in Acts 17. So I wouldn't be surprised if Luke included even some of the words of Paul, but what you would find would be a summary. You would find a paraphrase. Is that a good word? Maybe a paraphrase of what Paul said. And, you know, I tell my students here, if you don't believe that, that that's how speeches worked,

more or less, in the ancient world, what do you do with the Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and the Jesus of John? They sound very, very different. And the reason is that I think that the Jesus of John, John is paraphrasing in his own words what Jesus said. And that was okay in the ancient world and come to think about it even historians today and reporters today even their reports are not completely objective. Yeah. Subjectivity. You know it's fun I mean I kind of do that in some of my own books like I tell a lot of stories and books I write of summarizing people. And a lot of these stories are me recalling conversations that I've had. So what I often do to make it engaging, to make it personal, I'll record a dialogue in quotes. friend and ask them and then here's what they said that they're done quotes and we go back and forth but then i'll send it to them and say hey is this can you agree like does this sound like

that conversation we had you know they're like yeah that's that's it so even even then in quotation marks i'm capturing largely a summary of what they said but i'm making sure that they agree with like yeah that's that's basically the point like what were those word for word i don't even remember what i said but yeah i can sign off on that so even in a modern context and even now i mean i've kind of outed myself that's what i do in some of my um or you know i people are like well that's fine you're you're trying to represent what they're saying they're agreeing with it so like what's the big deal you know like i don't think even we demand that kind of precision. Yeah. I think that's a very good analogy with the way you just described it

there. And yeah, I mean, and that's, yeah. So that's the way in a sense that we do it today. That's certainly the way that they did it in the ancient world. And now I tell my students, the Bible wasn't, wasn't inspired in the 21st century. It was inspired in the first century. And so you cannot demand that things would be done like they're done today. So I have so many more questions, man, but this is going to, two guys talking together is going to kind of work against the actual main topic that we want to talk about. Kristen, I need to hear your voice. I've never actually asked you this. So here's this professor, this new professor with this funny accent.

What's going on through your mind when you first met Ozzy, who's Ozzy or sorry, Dr. Padilla when you were a, you know, finishing up, let's say, MDiv student at Beeson. Yeah, I'm a little nervous to tell you what I was thinking. Yeah. Have I heard this before? You know, I wasn't, I was, as he said, I was in my last semester as an MDiv student. So I was, I took three and a half years. So I was 26, I believe, at the time.

And I wasn't looking for a future husband, per se. I wasn't pursuing or seeing a new professor and thinking in that direction. However, I did notice that he was unmarried and that he was attractive. And I like to say that through the sovereignty of God, he just put us in situations that we found ourselves together, that we could get to know each other that would not have been possible any other way because I wasn't his student. He was not my professor. I was taking, uh, three courses to finish up. So I wasn't on campus as much. Um, but it just, we just happened to have those, um, those random kind of appointments. Uh, the first kind of major one was, uh,

we had parked in the parking lot at the same time and it's quite a bit of a walk from where we park to our building. And so we just, uh, walked from our cars all the way up to the school and, um, got to know each other that way. And yeah. That's when I noticed, man, she is good looking. But I had to repress that, you know, because I was the professor and so on.

But you can admit that now. Yeah. But now I can admit it. Yes. And she was, well, that day she read Scripture in chapel, and she was holding some conversations with some people. So I could tell she was serious about God. She was very intelligent. So, yeah, nice to make friends with her.

And I'm the daughter of a pastor, a Baptist pastor, and I always just told myself I would not marry a pastor um because it's and not because I mean I love my dad and I had a great experience it's just a hard life as a pastor's family uh so I but I never imagined that God would give me a professor um which was just um neat how God orchestrated that. Because I did have a seminary degree. I wanted to have a spouse who loved scripture and knew enough scripture that we could have really good conversations. And so it just worked out.

God worked it all out together. I hope I haven't transmitted some heresies to her. Not yet. Not yet. So Kristen, so you were raised Baptist then, right? I mean, is that, since I really want to spend a good deal of time talking about women in ministry, I don't love the way that's whatever phrase you want to use, women in leadership, women, elders, preaching, whatever. What's been your journey in that conversation? that's whatever phrase you want to use women in leadership, women, elders preaching, whatever. Um,

what's been your journey in that conversation? I would assume being raised Baptist, I don't want to, unless maybe American about, I don't know. Like I would assume that you were raised in an environment that was like no women in ministry. And yet now you wouldn't hold to that view. Can you talk to us about your journey? Sure. Um, and I write about this in the introduction of my book. Um, now that I'm called. Right. I mentioned that now that in the introduction of my book, Now That I'm Called. Right. I forgot to mention that. Now That I'm Called is the book you've written. You've written one or two books? One book. One book. Okay. Now That I'm Called. Okay. Yeah. So the short version

of my story is that I did grow up in a strong Christian home. My dad was a Southern Baptist pastor and his first church was a very small church in rural East Texas. And so he was the only staff member at the church. And I was saved as a young girl at a Billy Graham crusade in Little Rock. And from a very early age just had a desire to serve the Lord, love the Lord, love the church. And I have a vague memory of this, but my mom and dad remind me of it, that when I was seven or eight, I cried one Sunday, why didn't God make me a boy so I could be a preacher and I wasn't having any kind of gender dysphoria of thinking that I should have been a boy but it was more a reaction of the tension of of this desire to want to serve the Lord just like my dad is serving but not seeing any women doing it and so my dad never, nor my mom, ever said,

you can't serve the Lord in ministry because you're a female. But my reality was such that there weren't any living female examples. Of course, we had Lottie Moon and Annie Armstrong, but they were dead. So again, not living examples. And I had a misconstrued understanding of missions. So I didn't feel that God was calling me to missions. All the traveling evangelists that would come in to do revivals were male. So I struggled with, for many years with, man, I have this desire to serve the Lord. I don't know what this would look like, what this means, but I don't see a space for me. I don't see it working out.

And it wasn't until I was 15 that my mom, and my mom was a really good influence. Both my parents are great and had a great influence in my life. But my mom really encouraged me to just be obedient to God, even if I couldn't see what that end result would be. So I did the Baptist thing and I surrendered to ministry and went down, greeted my dad at the end of the aisle. And, you know, when the service is over, everyone comes and shakes your hand. And, and all the people that came forward affirmed that they saw God's work in my life, that they saw God's gifting in my life. Um, but they couldn't place me. And so the two things that they said were, they either said, you're going to be a great preacher's wife or a pastor's wife, or they would say, you're going to be a great preacher's wife or a pastor's wife, or they

would say, you're going to be the next Beth Moore, or do you want to be the next Beth Moore? And so by that point in my, you know, mid nineties, 15, 16 year old, um, Beth Moore was kind of a, an anomaly really, but a woman doing a wordbased ministry. Um, so those were the two options that were presented to me. Um, I went on to college, to Washtenaw Baptist University, had a great experience, um, continued to be affirmed by other people, by the church, but again, um, didn't know what vocational role that would take, that would be. You know, women's ministry, I guess, was always an option.

And we can revisit this, Preston, if you want. But it wasn't until many years later, because I resisted being a women's minister. It was really just until a few years ago that I realized the reason I was resisting being a woman's minister was because I had believed a lie that women weren't worthy enough to have a really good Bible teacher. So the experiences I had had in the church in college was such that as soon as men leave the room, so does the Bible teacher with any theological education. And so often a lot of the Bible studies, with the exception of Beth Moore, were very thin, theologically thin. And so it communicated to me that if I wanted to have a

ministry of value, like if I wanted to be a serious Bible teacher, it couldn't be to women or it couldn't be just to women. So I came on to seminary to Beeson Divinity School, had a wonderful, great experience, but still didn't see what God had in store. But it was while I was a student at seminary that God put on my heart other women like me, who we felt called by God to serve him, but felt like we were having to make our own path. And I know I've listened to the podcast you did with Tish, and she, in my book, Cassie did with Tish, Harrison Warren. And she, in my book, I feature testimonies of various women at the end of each chapter, and Tish was one of them. And so she described, if I get this right, being like in a jungle where she's having to, with a machete, chop down her own path.

And I described my journey as like being in a dark room with my arms outstretched, trying to find a light switch or trying to find the door. So it was in seminary as I was meeting other women and involved in my local church and meeting with young women in the youth group who God was calling. They all kind of had similar stories. My story wasn't unique. And so all that to say that experience in seminary, really God just put on my heart that he had something in store for me when it came to women in ministry in general. When I graduated seminary, it was in 2008 when the economy crashed and so between there already being a small vocational spaces for women plus the economy I couldn't find a job in ministry so it wasn't until 2015 that I came back to work at Beeson Divinity School and there's a lot of

other things that we could get go into but I said I'll give you the short version and that kind of yeah what was your theolog like talk to us about your theological journey I mean did you always growing up did you feel like you believed scripturally that men should only be pastors and leaders and then grow to change your view on that? Or were you never really convinced of the complementarian view from scripture? Yeah. How did, when did that change your scriptural understanding of this topic? Yeah.

So I didn't even know what the word complementarian was until I was in college in a theology class. And in that class we were assigned, we were having college in a theology class. And in that class, we were assigned, we were having to debate someone in class. And I was assigned the egalitarian position to debate a female student on the complementarian position. And that was the first time I knew these words, I'd heard these words. So I never questioned my, I never questioned that men should be pastors um what and I never really questioned why you know that women should or shouldn't preach it was more my attention was why do I feel so strongly called by God to have a proclamation ministry of teaching. And I, we would call it speaking instead of preaching. Um, so I would say, why do I feel called to speaking and teaching?

Uh, and yet I don't, where can I, where's the space for me to do that was more of my tension. Where can I live out that call? So, so yeah, so I never questioned whether men, only men should be pastors or should preach behind the pulpit. I didn't even know about the debate until that theology class. And even then, when I was assigned that position and started reading, I was frustrated because I thought I would lose the debate because I realized I was a complementarian. So that, but reading that book, it was... You were a complementarian because of some text of the Bible that you were reading? No, I think just by default, just by, just at that point, I hadn't really explored biblically, theologically, what I believed about that specific issue. It was just an inherited belief system.

People you respect, your dad and others, Holden, it's like, I mean, we grew up in these environments. And I'm not even saying it's necessarily bad. It's just, yeah, people you respect, Hold hold it they know god's word you trust them and and yeah it's easy to it's easy to have a conviction without being able to actually defend it from scripture yourself you know i mean right and it wasn't until i got to seminary at Beeson that I really did start wrestling with the text because I am an evangelical in the sense that I am committed to the authority of scripture. I want to be biblical. I don't want to disobey God. And so I was forced to have to wrestle with some of the difficult texts in scripture. And it, and it caused some questions for me. Can I even be called as a woman?

Does my, does my gender prohibit me from a word-based ministry? Should I even be in seminary? Therefore, you know, therefore. So I, during my time at Beeson, I still didn't have it figured out. And I still don't, but it really has been a journey. And one that has been enhanced and so helped by Osvaldo is we've had a lot of conversations at home. And him being a biblical scholar, he's been able to sharpen me. And so I have, I'm at a place, and we can get into it, but I'm at a place where I don't see in Scripture that it's a sin for women to preach God's Word

or to teach God's Word. There are people who do believe that today and who say it's a great heresy and that women can't do that. So I, theologically, I believe that women can have a ministry of the word. What do you, so the obvious question is, what do you do with 1 Timothy 2 that, you know, I guess we need to quote it. I guess we need to quote it. I do not. So Paul says, I do not.

Paul says, I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over, over men. Is that, I mean, I'm paraphrasing or. Right. I'll let Ozzy jump in at whatever point, but I think a lot of this depends on where you start the conversation. Do you start there or do you start, which passage of scripture where you start the conversation. Do you start there? Right. Or do you start, which passage of scripture do you start with? So I want to pose that question. And then secondly, I want to read scripture with scripture and conversation with scripture. So in verse nine, when it, I believe it's verse nine, when it talks about women and their hairstyles and their jewelry and, you know, dressing modestly.

We read that and we say that's cultural or we can adapt that to however it best fits in our church. And then we get to the next verse or verse verse 11 i think with women being silent and we say oh well it's it we're it's it's a literal reading right but we don't silence women all the way through in fact um as i'm doing this project on the reformation uh i've been learning that even women um prior to the time of the reformformation and during the time of the Reformation weren't allowed to participate in congregational singing based on 1 Timothy 2. So even John Calvin was criticized by a Catholic for allowing women to sing. And the Catholic says, but Paul says to be silent.

And Calvin says, let her sing and so so even on that verse about what it means for women to be silent we we interpret that depending on our context you know to what extent a woman is to be silent and then we get to the teaching and having authority um which i'll let Osvaldo talk more on. But then we move on to verse 15, where women should be saved through childbirth. And we say, that's not what Paul means literally. Because, you know, we don't believe in a works-based salvation. So here's what Paul really means. So I guess what I want to say

as we talk about this really important passage is recognizing that it's one that is not just an easy plain-faced reading all the way through from verses 9 through 15 and asking the question, why are we interpreting one verse in a way that might be different from the very next verse? So, yeah, basically there's clear textual evidence in that same passage that something should be taken literally, and every complementarian, 99% of complementarians would agree with that. So at least be open to the possibility that the women can't teach exercise authority of men might mean something less literal than it seems. Ozzy, you were raised, I mean, grew up, I would say even into the PhD program would have been complementarian, right?

I think you and I might have been the only complementarians at Aberdeen that time. Is that, is that correct? I mean, yeah. Yeah. That's, that's, uh, you know, I became a believer when I was 18 years old. Uh, I was, uh, I was, uh, I was in a gang in South Florida. I was into drug, into my brother was a drug dealer. My mom had gone through three divorces. Our family was really, really broken.

And the Lord just reached down and just saved us. My brother is a pastor now in Florida. We had a God. God was so merciful to us. And we converted in the context of a very conservative church, a wonderful church that was a gospel preaching church. But it was a very conservative church in gender questions. you said earlier, you grow up around, or you develop theologically around people who believe towards more of the complementarian end of the spectrum. And so you sort of, almost by osmosis, you take that view. And so my view was that, okay, so being a conservative Hispanic in church

is not the same as being a conservative Anglo, right? Because our cultures are different. So in the Hispanic church, this is paradoxical. Even though you have a machismo culture, nevertheless, women were given a lot of liberty. You know, and so it wasn't as, it wasn't as, oh, what's the word I'm looking for here? It wasn't as ideological. There wasn't a strong ideological root why women shouldn't be, shouldn't be preaching to the whole congregation. They just had a couple of verses, and that was it. So I grew up in that context, and then went through seminary at Trinity with that belief,

namely that, yes, women could teach other women, women could teach children, they could sing, all of that in the church, but they could not serve at the table. They could not serve the Eucharist, and they could not preach on a Sunday morning when the church was gathered. So that was my belief, and I never questioned that. And one of the reasons was because of that text of 1 Timothy 2. That seemed to me to be pretty clear. really clear. But I want to say that after I finished the PhD, this will knock down a caricature that you do all your thinking when you're doing your PhD, and then you're done thinking about issues. Not at all. Sometimes you just begin thinking about issues when you finish. So when

I finished the PhD, and I was being interviewed at Trinity, this was one of the questions that they asked me about. And for the first time, I started to think about people like Gordon Fee, who is an evangelical Christian, committed to the inspiration of the Bible, and yet he believed that women could be ministers. And I thought, well, if Gordon Fee believes that, and I have a lot of respect for him, I should at least investigate and give a serious study to what he has to say about that and people like him. The other thing, and Preston, I'm sure you can empathize with this, the British education that we received makes you you almost forces you to take the opposite view uh all the time i'm sure you remember in our seminars new testament seminars uh how

we would see people like simon gather colon francis watson start playing devil's advocate you remember that that's so ingrained in the the British system, which I think is a healthy thing. And that stuck with me. And then I started becoming devil's advocate against complementarian views, right? And then I started reading the text in what I think is what I like to call a more hermeneutically mature way, realizing that the moment that I read a document from the ancient world and from a different culture and language, that already is never going to be a plain reading. It doesn't mean that we cannot understand the Bible. If we don't know Greek, of course we can.

But the moment you read the Word of God, which which is foreign it's a foreign word in two ways it is foreign because it comes from God who is transcendent so that makes it foreign already to us as humans but it is also culturally foreign it comes from uh from you know in the New Testament in Greek that Greco Roman culture and so when I step into that world, through that word, I'm stepping into a different world and I cannot take assumptions that I normally take, that we also call it straight reading of the text. And so what I started doing too was reading some of the philosophers of that period. A friend of ours just published a book. He'll love this.

He just wrote a book called Paul and the Giants of Philosophy. So anyways, very good book. Recommend it. But I started reading the philosophers of that period who spoke about morality in the world of Paul. People like Plutarch, like Theocrist, like Cicero, you

name it. And what I began to realize is that the language they use when speaking about the conduct of women in public was incredibly similar to the language that Paul uses in 1 Timothy 2 when he talks about the conduct of women in public. So what that did for me, it did the following. It told me that the words of Paul in 1 Timothy 2, although, of course, the word of God, inspired word of God, nevertheless, in a sense, did not fall from the sky.

It was language that people in that period were using. So this forced me to see the very rootedness of the words of Paul again though inspired by God yet so rooted in that culture that it made me ask the question when we translate that text into modern practice

how much of the translation should how much of the culture of Paul should we translate along with the theology of Paul? See, Paul is in a patriarchal culture. You know this well. But just to give an example, the husband, the man is the pater familias, like the godfather. like the godfather the godfather this is amazing

if the father dies you would think that the inheritance would go to the wife right? that's what we would expect in North America well in the Greco-Roman world the house and everything would go to the male sons

that's an example of the ancient patriarchy. Another example would be that the father had to agree with the religion that the children took over. So if the children decided to follow a religion that was not the same as the father, it was a scandal. It was a shaming of the paterfamilias. It was a breaking of pietas, a breaking of the honor of the paterfamilias. That's a strong patriarchal culture.

And Paul is living in that culture. He's writing in that culture. And so I'm wondering how much of this stuff is paul just reflecting the culture uh and and so therefore we should leave it back there uh because we don't want to bring the culture along with the word of god we want to bring the word of god and how much is the word of god that i should bring uh to the present. I hope that's not too confusing. Do you have, I'm going to put you on the spot here, and if you can't recall anything, do you have any specific examples when you looked at the Greco-Roman background of how they viewed women in public, even from an ethical standpoint? Is there anything that stands out when you looked at the background that really helped you understand, for instance, 1 Timothy or 1 Corinthians?

Yeah. I had to wrestle with that. I'm writing a commentary for the 10th Old New Testament Commentary Series by IVP, and I've been assigned the pastoral epistles. Oh, right. I've been wrestling with that recently. I don't know if I have the answers. Well, here's a quick example. So Plutarch, the famous philosopher, thoughtful man of the ancient world who was a patriarchalist and so on,

he wrote this little essay about how a husband and a wife should get along and how they should act. So here's what he says about the husband and the wife in public. So here's a quote. He says, quote, for a woman ought to do her talking either to her husband or through her husband, and she should not feel aggrieved if, like the flute player, she makes a more impressive sound through a tongue not her own. layer, she makes a more impressive sound through a tongue, not her own. So that's an amazing statement. So there are other statements in people like Luther who say, when you are in public, let your husband do the talking, not the woman, because that is not, that's just not right.

You're shaming your husband if you are the one who takes the lead. right. You're shaming your husband if you are the one who takes the lead. And so when I read, for example, 1 Timothy 2, 11, 12, and 13, when it says, I don't allow women to have authority over men, I read that in the context as a very negative thing. So I would translate that as, I do not permit a woman to basically take over the Bible study that is happening in a home where the first Christians met. I don't allow them to do that. Not only is that not biblical because you cannot step over someone that's just not Christian enough, but also in that Greco-Roman culture, if the woman would have done that, the outsiders,

the non-Christian outsiders who were looking into Christianity, they would have thought that this was madness, that this was a movement where women were leading. And that would have been difficult for people to accept. So I just read an article by, I'm forgetting her name, Judith Gundry-Volf. Yes. Oh, Judith Gundry-Volff. Yes. And she's done a ton of work on this.

And she has a long, in-depth, very academic article on 1 Corinthians 11. Uh-huh. And as you know, what my audience might not know, but 1 Corinthians 11, 2 to 16, the whole head coverings thing. Yeah. It's one of the strangest passages within a so like for instance if you look at uh first corinthians 11 verses 7 to 9 you know paul says he seems to say like women don't even bear god's image like women bear the image of man man bears and you're like what did he just say that? Two verses later, he like says almost the opposite. Like, man, don't you forget, like you came from women and women are, you know, I was

like, what, what are you like a feminist or a misogynist? Like, and so anyway, it's, it's no matter where you're coming from, that passage is incredibly difficult. What she points out there. And I only remember this because I read it a couple days ago, is that Paul is navigating maintaining, oh, how do I say it? Certain social codes of conduct where you don't want to violate thick cultural kind of like codes of honor. kind of like codes of honor. At the same time, within that patriarchal system, he's trying to elevate women and maintain genuine equality. And that's why you have some statements where it seems like he's kind of giving a nod to the societal expectations. He doesn't want to disrupt the whole thing and cause all kinds of men being shamed according to public expectations of what

shame and honor looks like but then also trying to elevate women within that and and i it's i mean it's i think it's one of the best articles i'm trying to make sense of a passage i don't care where you're coming from it's just a tough passage to work through yeah anyway i hear you saying that that paul does he he in a sense the christian movement is disrupting hierarchical uh standards in the greco-roman world and yet he he doesn't want to do it too much in a sense i mean yes is that by on the right track there that there he is walking kind of a delicate balance of being disrupted but not so disrupted that it discredits the whole movement is that yeah that's that's very perceptive

of you that's that that's that's pretty much what i'm saying he cannot move too fast because if he moves too fast he's gonna lose the gospel and in the sense that people are not gonna listen to the gospel and if we have no gospel we have no possibility of change in this world. Our only hope for change is in the gospel. And so if we do something that will turn people off from the gospel, then we have some serious problems. Well, it was William Webb. I mean, I still, I know it's an old book now,

well, 17, 18 years old, wives, women, slaves, and homosexuals, right? But it just, I mean, cause he, he does, he clearly does this with slavery, right? He doesn't do away with slavery, but he guts it from the inside out, says things like slave, you know, slave masters, honor your slaves and they're equal to you, which was unheard of an ancient world, but he doesn't say, you know,

get rid of your slave. He doesn't end slavery, but he does does move in that direction and it correct would you agree with his work that he that that he seems to be doing the same thing with the ancient view of women um pushing things but not overthrowing the whole entire system i actually uh have my students read that book in one of my classes because i think it's one of the most even if even if you can't agree with everything in the book it is one of the most sophisticated accounts of moving from the biblical world to our world in a hermeneutically mature way so you know for me Kristen mentioned at some point a lot of this depends on when you where you start in scripture yeah now in the church we normally we know the New Testament better than the Old Testament. That's been my experience at churches.

But when I started reading the Old Testament, and actually Kristen opened my eyes to this when she was writing her book, you know, I find people like Miriam, Deborah, Huldah. And then in the New Testament, we have Maryary who's basically speaking the word of god in the magnificat uh you have philip's daughters philip the evangelist in acts who luke goes out of his way to say that they were they were they prophesied there were four virgins he had four virgin daughters who prophesied um which basically means they they receive a word of god that to be sure was to be tested by the community but they were speaking the word of God that, to be sure, was to be tested by the community, but they were speaking the word of God to the people of God.

And so you have those powerful texts. And then you have a text like Galatians 3, which I think you alluded to. And now in Christ, there is neither slave for free, male or female. And I've heard people say, and actually I used to say this, that that passage means that in the mind of God, we're all equal. So in the mind of God, there's no male or female. There's no slave for free. But that would be like saying that God loves us in his mind,

but he doesn't do anything about it in the actual real world, right? That's not how it works. Paul, he wants to make Galatians 3.18 a reality. He wants to make it so that there are no Jews or Gentiles. And so he's having them have meals together. And that raises all kinds of problems as we can, as you know better than me about this in Romans 14 and 15. And I think he's trying to do away with slavery. And I think he's trying to do away with a system that would oppress women. And so when I read all those texts and then I get to 1 Timothy 2, I find 1 Timothy 2 utterly strange.

Utterly strange. utterly strange and i say you know there has to be something in the congregation something on the ground that is leading paul to speak this way it's almost like how i'm gonna feel you might like this analogy you might not but like how calvinists would come to hebrews 6 or something i mean agree with whatever perception you want, but that's kind of, any system will have that passage or that passage that's like, well, that doesn't really resonate with the rest of Scripture. I mean, this is a basic hermeneutical point. We do take, rarely is there a doctrine or an ethical point that just has complete unambiguous uniformity throughout scripture. There's always tensions and differences, even something like, like a divorce or, or gosh, I mean, we can go on. I mean,

observing the Sabbath. The Eucharist. What's that? The Eucharist. Yeah. So, you know, my belief today, I'm going to, I'm going to be upfront because I'm already convinced about this now. Although sometimes I have questions.

But my belief is that whatever a man can do at the church, so can a woman. Okay. But, here's a but, we must pay attention to the culture where we're ministering. pay attention to the culture where we're ministering. So if I'm in a culture like, say, some countries in the Middle East, where it is an honor and shame culture and the woman cannot be viewed as a leader, I would not thrust a woman forward and say, you must be a pastor here. Because that endangers the gospel.

You have to go slow. And as more people convert, their worldview changes. It becomes a biblical worldview. And then maybe you can start, you know, the woman having more freedom in that particular culture as a pastor. But I think in North America today, this is not a patriarchal culture. And I actually think that it hurts the testimony of the church not to have women in positions of leadership in the church. Well, it furthers that perception or stigma that the church is anti-women or misogynistic or patriarchal in the bad sense of the term. Yeah. Kristen, as a female with a Master of Divinity who is, so you're not in a ministry position now, but maybe you would be in a future, paid pastor, but like, how do you feel as a female in American evangelicalism, broadly speaking, in 2019? Is it hard? Do you still feel the misogyny? Is it getting better? Yeah. I haven't had a lot of negative experiences one-on-one. Where my struggle has been and where I'm very passionate about in the work that I do today is that in a

lot of the churches, in a lot of evangelical churches in particular, and perhaps even more so in the South, there just aren't a lot of spaces for women. And there's, I think that goes to a lack of theological view regarding women in ministry. So for a lot of churches, I think that goes to a lack of theological view regarding women in ministry. So for a lot of churches, I think we've been content with the status quo or just the way things have always been done with a very male-dominated leading type church. And I was telling Osvaldo the other day, I said, gosh, it just dawned on me. So when you go to a lot of these churches, if you go in as a male, and I'm just using an example here, but if you go in as a male, every moment of your worship experience and your teaching, you know, receiving teaching in the Sunday school hour is mitigated, is delivered, is shaped by men. Sunday school hour is mitigated, is delivered, is shaped by men.

So you go in, the prayer is done by a man, the offering is done by a man, the usher are men, the person reading scripture might be a man, the preacher, the Sunday school teacher is a man, the worship leader is a man. How are women informing you spiritually in the church? They may be there next to you singing with you, but it's almost as if you have two churches within the church. So then, you know, the women can get together and have a kind of church together. But as a man coming in,

of church together. But as a man coming in, nothing about that worship experience may really be touched by a woman. Why does it matter? Well, I think it matters because for one, we say that the church is a family of God. And we are, evangelicals are really strong. You know, families should have a father and a mother at home. That's the best case for children. We make a huge fuss and case about the need for traditional marriage and fathers and mothers. But then you get to the church. How is it functioning like a family? Where are the mothers? How are women ministering to you? And I've heard Osvaldo say this, that especially this church that we were at during his sabbatical in Cambridge,

he said, and I don't want to put words in your mouth here right here, but he said that I need to hear God's word through the mouth of a woman, just like I need to hear things from my mother. I need to hear grace and forgiveness and love from my mother, just like I need it from my father. So there is something about a woman that, and it fits with the complementarian view that men and women are different. And whatever that means, whatever it means to be masculine and feminine, the thing is we need each other.

God has made it as such that from the very beginning in the garden that you needed both to minister, to serve on behalf of God. You find that at the very beginning with Adam and Eve. And so I want to push back this. I want to push back and say, we desperately need women who are called by God and are theologically trained,

ministering to the people of God. Our women need that, but our men need to, in some shape or form, in some shape or form to have something of their worship experience, their spiritual formation touched by the mothers of God. Does that make sense? Yeah, totally. You said something. I was going to ask this, and I never know quite how to ask this or say it. So you said theologically trained so i've seen in some circles that are

working so hard for female equality in the preaching and teaching that and again maybe it's my male privilege the blinders i have on whatever but sometimes i'm like privilege the blinders I have on whatever but sometimes I'm like I'm kind of cringing at this female speaker and I don't think it's because she's a female it's just that like she has no theological training not that you need a degree but like yeah saying things about the text that are like oh my god I just like I think if you had a penis I'd'd be cringy. I think. I'm pretty sure. And I'm like, man, are we pushing so – in some circles, are we pushing so hard to reverse the wrong that now we're, like, lowering the sort of theological bar? And this is what I love about you guys because both of you guys are

theologically wired. You're passionate about that and everything. So it's not even – but have you seen that or is that a – well, you know who it was? It was Sydney Park who we studied with in Aberdeen that, you know, here's a female, she's Korean. She has a, with the Fuller Seminary, she's getting a PhD. And even she's like, I don't know if I'm called a ministry. And she was so sick and tired of people saying you need to be in ministry.

You need to be a ministry. And it was really because she's a female. It's like, wait, your first question should be, am I called, am I qualified? Am I, you know like and then we can talk about the feet but just because like being a female doesn't qualify me more it's just right you know like I so I'm I'm I am weary and maybe it's too like um and maybe this is this is more of an issue more charismatic circles that were very pro women in ministry and even then some sometimes in some charismatic circles, theological training is, you know, almost like a negative thing or irrelevant or, and so I, gosh, I just probably offended 20% of my

audience. Uh, no, it's so that, that, that is all a summary quote from a lot of my theologically equipped, uh, Pentecostal friends who are like, man, we like, they're the ones that say like, our tradition needs more theology. I'm just kind of nervous about that kind of. Yeah. I was going to say, President, that I've read Craig Keener, for example, say just recently that the Pentecostal charismatic movement needs more

theological education and that's not because of any bad that's just how it is he's pentecostal yes he is a pentecostal so i don't think that didn't sound offensive to me what you said aj swoboda is four square and he'd be the same thing he's got a phd's but he's like man my tradition needs more of this so right i have a square and he'd be the same thing. He's got a PhD. But he's like, man, my tradition needs more of this. I have a theory and I could be wrong, but on the conservative side, I mean, it's just ironic, Preston. I have heard growing up, they'll point to women without theological training who are out speaking and they'll say, see, that's why women can't be

preachers or teachers yet they'll let you encourage their women to go to seminary they won't pay for them to go okay and then if if they do go to seminary you know the biggest struggle of our women coming out of seminary is not finding a job. So I spoke with several women last semester who were talking to me about, should I come to Beeson Divinity School? And the number one reason that they said that they were hesitating to come to seminary was because they felt sure that they would not be able to find a job at a church as a woman. So it's this almost like we want to point to the women and say, see, those women are examples of why women shouldn't be in ministry. But yet, we haven't changed it to be where we're encouraging women to ministry, and then we're creating spaces

for them to serve that fit within our theological tradition. So I think if you're a complementarian, there's so much room and space where you can grow and create jobs at your church for women in ministry. Or you hire women for those jobs that they can do. I know Jim Wilkin talks about this. for those jobs that they can do. I know Jim Wolkin talks about this. If I may just interrupt real quick, a lot of the women that Kristen is talking about,

when we actually talk to them, a lot of them don't even want to be senior pastors. So it's not like I want to be the head of a big church. Many of them are just saying, I just want to have a place to serve in the church and make a living out of the gospel because I feel God calling me. So I want to be a children's minister. I want to be a woman's minister.

And, you know, so even if we can create space like that for women who feel called, I think that would be a great advance for the church. And it's funny how, and I know Tisha's talked about this, but the Spirit of God is moving women to want to serve Him. And so if they can't find it in the church, they're going to these other spaces like blogs and podcasts and conferences. What's wrong with podcasts? Right. conferences, and they're kind of going out on their own apart from the church.

And then, to be frank, once they get a big enough platform, publishers are giving them the book deals and asking them to write the Bible studies, and they're getting invited to the conferences, and thus it goes on. So I feel like the church really needs to formulate a theology for women in ministry whatever tradition you're in um and if you don't think that God calls women to ministry or that they're even needed in ministry that the church needs mothers then then that's that's a significant to me me, that's, that's going to be a problem. But if you do believe that God calls women to ministry, then start thinking through what could this look like at our church, within our tradition, within our set of beliefs. And as Osvaldo said, I'm not even called to be a senior pastor. You know, most women are not at some, at Beeson Divinity School, at least, aren't pursuing senior pastor. You know, most women are not, at Beeson Divinity School at least,

aren't pursuing senior pastor roles. They're just wanting to serve the Lord. And the challenge I think that a lot of women face today is that lack of space, that lack of theology, that lack of encouragement, and then those voices that say what you're doing is heretical or sinful. And so, you know, it just kind of makes it a little bit more difficult and challenging atmosphere for women. Yeah. What do you think is the best, in your opinion, What do you think is the best, in your opinion, going back to playing devil's advocate, what would you say is the best argument that women are obviously fully equal, have gifts, talents, the church wouldn't exist, wouldn't succeed without the robust ministry of women. And yet because of, I don't know, order of creation, because of God's desire to keep sex differences intact, whatever, that women are not,

God does not desire that women would be in a church leadership role. What do you think is the best argument for that kind of position? Yeah, I think the best argument in my mind to my mind the best argument would be what i would call a flat reading of first timothy two okay fair enough so um which i'm sorry you know i don't mean to be disparaging uh i have a lot of dear brothers and sisters who don't who we don't see this eye to eye on this. We have wonderful fellowship. And I would say at B-STEM, we don't take a stance. So we have faculty and staff and students who would disagree and would come from both complementarian and egalitarian traditions.

I mean, I do have to say that there's a certain, maybe extremes of both ends that I have a little patience for, both at the extreme complementarian and the extreme egalitarian. Like the extreme egalitarian would be, you know, the novelist Margaret Atwood. She wrote the book that made it into a big series on Hulu called The Handmaids, The Handmaid. The Handmaid in Style? The Handmaid in Style. Oh, yeah, of course.

Anyways, in that book, she has a woman speak like a radical egalitarian, critiquing a man, and the man is so frustrated that he says, do you want me to cut off my testicles? And the man is so frustrated that he says, do you want me to cut off my testicles? Yeah, that where like men are just toxic intrinsically. Or here's what I don't, to use your term, extreme egalitarian side. If people feel the need to diminish sex differences to get to, to achieve equality that I don't, I don't not only find that in scripture, but I think sometimes the arguments are just like, we're not the same.

We're beautifully different. We should celebrate our differences. And this is something like NT Wright and Mike Bird and others are passionate of maintaining the beautiful differences between men and women that these reflect God's creation. And yet you argue that within those differences and because of those differences, men and women should be in leadership positions. But yeah, it's, it's that extreme view that one feels like they need to diminish differences in order to achieve equality. To me, that's,

that's just going against the grain of scripture. I feel. And I would throw a wrench in this preston so as well then i don't use uh complementarian or egalitarian labels of ourselves although we would say that we're complementarian in some ways and egalitarian in other ways um non-hierarchical complementarian is that uh that's a phrase that we are we are different and that we need those differences to compliment one another. As I've said with the father and mother, I think that's actually more complementarian than what you find in some churches. Um, but the, sometimes

when you start using labels that other, other people stop listening to you, they've assigned everything that goes with what they think goes with that label. And it's the end of the conversation. Yeah. And so we have friends that use those labels and that's fun. And some people would say you are this or you are that, but, um, we want, as, as all this says, he's biblical. That's his label.

want as father says he's biblical that's his label hey we're we're over an hour now i've got to run i'm sure you guys do too but i just um thank you so much for your spirit and i just love hearing how people engage this conversation well i i don't know feel, I mean, I've said it a podcast several times. Like I, I'm kind of up in the air. I need to do a ton of study on it before I really land. And,

and this is why I keep having more and more egalitarian, sorry, non-hierarchical, whatever, because I already know, I feel like I know all the ins and outs of the complementarian view. and to me, I'm just trying to really get inside of,

of the other view. And, and to me, it doesn't, it get inside of of the other view and and to me it doesn't it comes to for me it comes i come at scripture with the the big question mark in me is if the complementarian for lack of better terms is correct what's the what's the lot moral logic for that even if you made an argument that most men are bi because of testosterone whatever we are out of whatever let's just say most males have natural leadership qualities even if you said that it's still like 70 30 percent well women are more emotional than men or than you know whatever it's like okay even if you said that and even that's biologically debated but that's still it's a generality it's not 100

you know some men weep during movies and their wife's sitting next to him like what do you do you know like i don't so it doesn't it doesn't to me it doesn't make any sense to universally exclude women from leadership even if you tried to say, well, God's natural wiring of male and female, one's more wired to leadership. It's still a generality. So I don't, and I know that's not a biblical argument, but it's a, it's one from general revelation, natural law. So to me, it just, I come at it with a huge question mark saying what? Sure, sure. You know, even when we think about what does it mean to be a leader? You know, even when we think about what does it mean to be a leader, what that looks like in North America may be very different from what it looks like in Latin America.

So maybe in Latin America, a leader who has emotions is more valued than a leader who is more hardwired and just a fax place. That's so good you know where i land anthropologically in these things is that apart from the from the sexual differences that god has has put in us as male and females uh the difference between men and women is one of degree not one of kind yes that's so yeah anything that a man can do a woman can do except for you know give birth so anything that a man can do, a woman can do, except for, you know, give birth. So anything that a man can do, a woman can do, and anything that a woman can do, a man can do, we're just different in degrees, not in kind. We are the same kind. We are human beings made both in the image of God. And then we have, yeah, then we have, we tend to go in different ways but that's just a broad tendency yeah yeah i and i know we're out of time but what this conversation looks like as a baptist

is different than what it looks like as let's say an anglican or episcopalian so we have complementarian anglicans at beason and what that looks like in their church is women can be ordained as a deacon, but not as a, that women can preach, but they can't serve behind the table at, serve the sacraments. So in a Baptist church, so to be a complementarian is, means that a woman can't preach. And so what this looks like in the different traditions can then have all sorts of conversations. a lot different than the conversations I have with my Baptist brothers and sisters about why a woman can't preach God's word in different settings. That's fascinating. And that has to do with how just ecclesia, the ecclesiological differences. Yes.

Yeah. And I wonder if preaching, whether or not we say it is, if we think of it as a sacrament in certain traditions, and that's maybe even why even more so we're reticent to allow women to preach. I don't know. That's just a question because in the Anglican church, it is those sacraments that are, especially, I don't want to say off limits to women, and not just, and I say Anglican. I'm thinking some ACNA churches, whereas in the Episcopal Church, of course, this is not.

We have all kinds of other issues in the Episcopal Church. Like getting people to show up on Sundays. You guys are full on Episcopal, not even Anglican, right? I mean, you went all the way. Yeah. Well, we go to the Cathedral Church of the Advent. It's a strong evangelical, one of the few Episcopal evangelical churches in this area. It describes itself as a unicorn.

Yeah, right. Right. But it's evangelical and based on the Book of Common Prayer. Yeah. We love the Book of Common Prayer. And so it's rare to find that in an American Episcopal church. Yeah. Evangelical and Book of Common Prayer based.

Yeah. Yeah, but I think for another question for another podcast pressing with someone else maybe but the you know there are questions of what for a woman what does it mean to be a woman what does it mean to be in christ what is the role of the holy spirit um in these matters uh church history um could be its own podcast on the treatment of women and women's roles. So when we have these conversations, I encourage people that to have, to have the conversations and to have it in humility, but to recognize that it's something that we need to continue to discuss,

right? It deserves ongoing discussion. Do you, I know I keep, I keep continuing us, but um is is there a need for more books to be written or I mean is there anything that hasn't been said on this topic because people tell me like you should because I'm kind of on the fence and whatever I can go either direction that I should pursue this on book but I'm like dude there's like thousands of books on this I can't imagine there's another word that hasn't been said that needs to be said or do you feel like this is an area that still needs to be you know addressed I keep book ideas in my phone so I have enough yeah I think they're just like there continue to be books on any number of things.

Yeah. Continue to write books on Augustine and Luther and the doctrine of salvation and ecclesiology. And so as long as we're going to the word of God, I think there's just, there's a lot of, there's a lot of work that we can continue to do and i think there's right now in my view i think there's a lot more conversations needed in light of trying to base this in um a ordering of the trinity and that those kinds of um highly problematic and dubious approaches.

But how that affects how we think about this issue in women. I was going to say too that I think in theology now there's a rebirth on anthropology, on the theology of anthropology. What does it mean to be human in light of artificial intelligence and things like that? We're thinking more and more. So like Karl Barth's volume three or book three that has to do with the doctrine of creation, a lot of people are working on that part of Karl Barth now

because we're thinking about what it means to be a human being. And to the extent that male and females are human beings, there is a lot of room for writing about this so i i agree with kristen well i i mean i i have an eye on this topic largely because i'm knee-deep in transgender questions and yes deal with similarity what does it mean to be male female masculine feminine and these kind of categories. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thanks so much you guys for being on the show. One more time, Kristen, your book is Now That I'm Called, right? Who's the publisher? Zondervan Academic. That's right. Okay. So the subtitle is A Guide

for Women Discerning a Call to Ministry. Awesome. And it's both testimonial and theological, biblical, whatever. Is it kind of woven together? Yeah. The first five chapters is moving through scripture. And the fifth chapter dealing with 1st Timothy 2. And then the last three chapters, more practical. What does this look like? Theological education. So I hope that it continues to be a good resource to women. Yeah. And Ozzy, you write books that nobody understands, right?

You still were doing academic. That's a stereotype, right? Like we sit in our ivory tower and say stuff that you're working on. Are your commentaries at the wall? Are you working on other things or? Yeah, we're actually, I'm editing. I'm not the main editor, but I'm one of the editors in a book called The New Testament in Color. Oh, cool. Which is four of us, two females.

One is an Anglo female. The other one is an Asian American female. And then an African American brother and myself a Hispanic. And we're all doing this book called New Testament. There are contributors to this book in addition to us. But it's the New Testament in Color.

And it's how your background, your ethnicity can help you see things that maybe somebody else couldn't see and vice versa. As you interpret the new Testament and that's going to come out with IVP, probably maybe two or three years. It's still in the beginning stages.

That's awesome. What a great book. That's awesome. We hope it's going to be helpful. Thanks so much for being on you guys. Really appreciate you. And I'll probably see you in a few weeks in San Diego. Take care. Bye. Thanks for listening to the show. If you have been blessed, challenged, or encouraged by Theology in the Raw, I encourage you to consider, to pray about,

to meditate on the possibility of contributing financially to the show. This is a listener-supported podcast. And if you want to help out the Theology in the Raw ministry, then please go to patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw. That's patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw. You can support the show for as little as five bucks a month. And in return, you get access to premium content like once a month podcasts that I create only for my Patreon supporters or once a month blog posts that I write only for my Patreon supporters. And also you get access just to some informal chit chat conversations, community discussions on the Patreon platform. Again, that's patreon.com forward slash Theology in the Raw.

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