Theology in the Raw - An Honest Search for What the Bible Really Says about Women in Leadership:

Episode Date: February 16, 2026

For over 3 1/2 years, I researched what the Bible says about women in church leadership. I didn't have a conclusion when I started out. I just wanted to understand what the Bible says about the topic and sort through all the scholarly debates on all sides. I write about all of this in my new book From Genesis to Junia: An Honest Search for What the Bible Really Says about Women in Leadership. And I sum up my book in this epiosde. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Portland! I know you are hearing this because my data guy tells me that you're one of my top cities for downloads. Well, I will be in your neighborhood March 8th and 9th, 2026 for the Portland Faith, Sexuality, and Gender Conference, and I am hoping to see you there. The full conference is designed to equip pastors, educators, and church leaders to engage the LGBTQ conversation with grace and truth. You'll also have the option to register for just the two and a half hour introduction to the LGBTQ conversation at taking place the first evening on Sunday, March 8th. Just head over to Centerforfaith.com forward slash events and select the Portland Conference. We also have incredible group pricing so you can bring along your friends and fellow pastors and church staff.

Okay. So once again, that's Centerforfaith.com events forward slash events to sign up for the faith, sexuality, and gender conference on March 8 and March 9th. Can women serve in positions of leadership in the church? this is a topic I've been interested in for a long time, but I haven't studied it out for myself until recently. As many of you know, I know many of you have been following my journey as I've talked about it on the podcast, but over the last three and a half plus years, I have been spending loads of time researching, thinking through, and writing about the topic of women and church

leadership. And I've documented my journey in this conversation in my forthcoming book from Genesis to Junia and on a search for. what the Bible really says about women and leadership. People watch it on YouTube. Here is the cover. I thought it turned out pretty cool. Shout out to whoever designed this over at David C. Cook. Got a team over there that I think did a really good job on the cover.

And it comes out, yeah, March 3rd. You can pre-order it now. And what I want to do in this podcast is I want to read my introduction to the book and then summarize the contents. And then I will tell you where I land on this. question. Well, I'm not going to tell you where I land in this podcast, but I will tell you where I land in the book. So my name is Preston-Sprinkle. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in Raw. Okay, before I read the introduction to my book, let me just give a couple preliminary thoughts on what

this book is all about. First of all, my focus, my approach in this topic and the book is deeply exegetical, meaning I simply want to know. what does the Bible say about it to the best of my understanding? I don't deal with modern day church structures. I don't really, I don't only deal with more subjective kind of arguments. I want to know what does this ancient religious text that we call the Hebrew Bible and the Greek New Testament. What do the scriptures say about this? So it's not a, a comprehensive book in the sense that, you know, like a lot of my other books, I deal with, you know, exegesis and theology and sometimes philosophy and psychology. And then I get into like modern

day application. I don't, I don't do that in this book. There's other books that deal with different aspects of this conversation. This book is simply focused on the exegetical arguments. And that's, that's really my passion. I really want to know what the Bible says about it. I've met some people that have told me. I don't need to figure out what the Bible says. I've known many amazing female preachers, many amazing female leaders. And this confirms that women should be preachers and leaders. And, you know, I appreciate that.

I've met many female scholars and pastors and preachers and leaders over the years, too, and I have deep respect for them. And I don't want to discount the strength of one's experience, but these kind of arguments, they do put experience over the text. I don't take that approach. I don't want to discount the importance of experience, but my focus is simply on the text of scripture. Some other arguments I've heard, you know,

are drawn from kind of one's personal calling. You know, I've heard women say I feel a deep, profound calling from God to be a pastor. So, and sometimes that can become the main reason why some women want to be in leadership, but want to be a pastor. And again, I appreciate the power of one's calling from God. I don't want to discount this. But, you know, I would say that, you know, a subjective sense of calling must also match what scripture teaches on the topic of whatever we're talking about.

You know, in my work on sexuality, I've met several same-sex couples to say almost the exact same thing, almost the exact identical wording. You know, we feel called by God to get married. And I'm like, well, okay, does that calling match what the text of Scripture says? I can neither confirm or to die, you know, that you have felt this calling from God. All I can do is say, does it match up with what scripture teaches on this topic? So I, you know, I try to treat all issues this way. And that's what I did with the topic of women in leadership. So let's get into my introduction to the book. I will read this verbatim and then I will I will summarize chapter one. I'll get in the chapter one, deal with that a little more thoroughly and then I will

more briefly summarize the rest of the book so you know what it is all about. So here we go. The introduction. May, the entry is May 2022, my journey into the women in leadership debate. I'm writing this introduction in real time. It's May 22, and I'm about to embark on a theological journey to figure out what I think the Bible says about women in leadership. I'm a bit nervous about this journey since I don't know my destination. I honestly don't know where I'll end up. Authors typically write their book's introduction later after they've, you know, written the rest of the book and figured out their conclusion. That's how I've written most of my previous books, But this one's different.

I'm not going to start with a settled conclusion and then write the book in order to convince you of that conclusion. Rather, I'm inviting you to peek over my shoulder as I journey through Scripture to figure out what I believe it says about this contentious issue. Now, most Christians I know have strong opinions about the matter, and I used to be one of them. I grew up in a staunchly complementarian context where only men could be pastors and leaders. And I believe this was the only valid biblical position. Any of you that allowed women to teach and preach was a direct, violation of God's word. Over the years, though, I've seen some problems with this view. Some arguments seem solid and, while others seem forced and unconvincing. I'm not sure it's wrong.

I'm just not sure it's right. The same goes for the egalitarian view. I've come across some compelling arguments for women in leadership, but I've also seen some pretty terrible arguments, too. I'm not sure it's wrong. I'm just not sure it's right. So for the last several years, I've remained undecided about what I think the Bible says about women in leadership. Why stay undecided for so long? Well, I'm a bit obsessive when it comes to research in a topic, especially a hotly disputed one. I want the depth of my study to determine the strength of my conclusion.

I never want to give thin answers to thick questions. And there are a lot of thick questions surrounding this issue that I haven't had time to thoroughly research. Until now, this fall, 2022, I'm taking a second. sabbatical and setting aside my other ministry responsibilities to focus on the question of women in leadership. I doubt I'll be able to finish the book in six months, but at least I'll have a running start. After the sabbatical is over, I'll keep researching the topic until I feel like I can land on a view with some level of confidence. I can't promise you that I'll be an unbiased researcher.

Nobody is totally free from bias. What I can say is that I don't have any external pressures, a job, a church, relationships that are nudging me toward one view over another. So, for instance, if I was teaching at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, which is staunchly complementarian, or at Fuller Theological Seminary, which is firmly egalitarian, I'd have a lot of financial and practical reasons to arrive at a certain conclusion. Or if I were a pastor at a complementarian church, I'd need to agree with its view, unless I was looking for a job change.

If my wife were a senior pastor, my motivation might seem tainted. If all my friends were on one side of the debate, my perspective might be clouded. But I don't work for a church or a seminary. My wife would rather stroll barefoot through a room filled with broken glass than to be a pastor. And I have friends on all sides of this debate. And since my friends are real friends, I won't lose them if I end up on the, quote, wrong side of this issue. No matter what I conclude in this book, I expect to keep all my jobs and men industry roles, make the same amount of money, and keep speaking at both egalitarian and

complementarian churches, which I have been doing for the last 10 years. I won't lose my ordination status because I'm not ordained. And I won't be kicked out of my denomination because I'm not part of a denomination. My wonderful publisher doesn't need me to uphold a particular position. They publish books that examine all sides of this issue. And even personally, and I guess you just have to take my word for it, I really don't have any major leaning. and either direction. As I said before, I see strong and weak arguments for each view. And all my thoughts and questions so far are really half-baked and under-researched, hence this book. Maybe I'll become more convinced of arguments I found unconvincing, and maybe I'll see

problems with arguments I previously thought were strong. I might even be embarrassed by some ignorant things I've said in this introduction. Oh, I hate that for sure. Although I don't know exactly how this book will unfold. Here are some key topics and passages that I plan on studying. I'll need to spend some time on Genesis 1 to 3 in the relationship between the first humans. Adam's alleged headship over Eve forms the bedrock for the complementarian view that I grew up with, and I'm eager to see if the text actually supports this view. I'm also curious about the rest of the Old Testament. What does it say about women in leadership, especially how it portrays certain female prophets like Holda and Deborah? but since my main focus is on church leadership, I'll probably devote more time to the New Testament.

Even here, I have to be selective. I know I want to look at how women participated in the ministries of Jesus and Paul. I'll also spend a good deal of time in three important passages. First Corinthians chapter 11 versus 2 to 16, 1st Corinthians chapter 14 versus 34 to 35, and 1 Timothy, of course, 1 Timothy, chapter 2 versus 8 to 15. I'm pretty sure I'll study that. the so-called household code in Ephesians 5, 22 to 33, since church roles and household roles are sometimes related in the first century. And I want to understand the nature of New Testament prophecy since women were clearly prophesying in the early church. If prophesy, or is prophecy akin to preaching or teaching? Is it an authoritative activity? There are,

these are significant questions I'll try to address. In a study like this, it's important that we don't understand things like leadership and church from a modern perspective. I don't want to simply drape the New Testament in the robes of modern Western church structures and call it the same thing. Whatever Paul was saying to Timothy in the first century, it probably didn't involve deciding whether a woman could step under a bright stage, you know, under bright stage lights next Sunday and deliver a polished sermon to an audience of 5,000. My aim in the study is to step back into the dusty streets and crowded homes of the first century believers and explore the question of women in church leadership according to their understanding of church and leadership, not ours.

What today's churches choose to do with that portrait lies beyond the scope of this study. What do I mean by leader and leadership? I'm hesitant to start with an overly precise definition and then project this definition onto the text of scripture. I'd rather have the Bible itself shape our understanding of leadership as we journey through our study. But since I'll be using the term leader from the get-go. Here's a general definition of what I mean at this early stage of our journey. A leader is a person who, one, holds a recognized title or position of authority, such as king or elder. Two, guides and directs a group of people toward a specific goal or mission. Or three, speaks or acts in a way that expects others to follow their direction.

I offer these descriptions only as flexible frameworks, not fixed barriers. Again, our understanding of leadership should arise from the text, not be forced upon it. I'll be sure to revisit and fine-tune this definition as we get the portions of the New Testament that deal with leadership in the church. In any case, I'll try to be clear where and why I think someone is considered a leader based on this general definition. A few quick words before we dive in. First, I'll be waiting through lots of academic literature on this topic, but I plan to write in a conversational tone. I want this book to represent the scholarly debates responsibly, but I also want it to be readable for people who don't have a seminary degree.

If you're a scholar, you might find my tone to colloquial, and if you're a non-scholar, you might be annoyed by the copious footnotes. Either way, I hope this book can bridge the gap between the Academy and the Church. Second, I know the terms egalitarian and complementarian are highly disputed. Some have ditched these terms for others like mutualists instead of egalitarian and patriarchal instead of complementarian. But while egalitarian and complementarian may be frayed, the other labels have their own loose threads. Whichever term we use, I believe the most respectful approach is to call a view what its proponents call it.

In other words, I don't think it's helpful when egalitarians label the other view patriarchal if its proponents don't use that label. Likewise, it's misleading to slap feminist on the opposing view if they don't use it themselves. That term carries connotations that many egalitarians reject. Since most complementarians seem to prefer this term, this is the one I'm going to use. And while mutualist is gaining traction, I think egalitarian is still the more recognizable term. so I'll use egalitarian throughout the book. But I want to be clear about what I mean by each word. So in this book,

egalitarian refers to the view that women can serve in all areas of church leadership. And complementarian refers to the view that certain positions of church leadership are reserved for men. Both terms can carry lots of other implications and assumptions. But when I use the terms here, I mean nothing more than what I just said. There are, of course, variations within both groups. For instance, soft complementarians believe that women can teach and preach in churches as long as they are under the authority of male elders. Some egalitarians believe that men and women are equal in every way, while others are happy to celebrate the differences between men and women. I'll tease out these variations where they're relevant.

Lastly, my study will be strictly exegetical in nature. It will focus on what the Bible says about women in church. leadership in its own context. I'm not going to offer modern-day applications, nor will I address the modern-day problems that sometimes develop in complementarian or egalitarian churches. These issues are worth addressing, but it would take a whole other book to do so, and I'm not sure I'm the right person to do that. My goal here is to provide an honest evaluation of the biblical arguments. I'll leave the application questions to other scholars and other readers like you. Okay, I just ordered a truckload of books, which should be here in a couple of days.

I'll spend the next few months reading as deeply and widely as I can. And then once I've taken copious notes, maybe I'll start to think about putting pen to paper. See you in a few months or a few years. Wow, that's so fun rereading my introduction that I wrote in May 2020. to, I remember, I vividly remember writing this and not knowing what the next several, end up being several years would entail. I didn't know how long it was going to take to write the book. I really didn't.

You know, I knew it would take more than that, you know, that fall sabbatical that I had. That did give me a running start just to have several weeks of just, just, uninterrupted time to research and think and chase rabbit trails. Oh, my word, that I chase rabbit trails. For instance, some of you might have followed my study on the word, the Greek word Keffalae, the translated head. And as many of you know, it's used in two key places in this debate, Ephesians 523 and 1st Corinthians 113, where it says on some level, you know, man or husband, his head over the woman or his wife. And I was thinking like, I'll spend about a week looking into the meaning of Keffelay.

Well, a week turned into two weeks, two weeks turned into two months. Two months turned into about six months. I think I spent researching just the word Keffelais. And this is kind of typical how the book turned out. My summary of that six-week or sorry, six-month study of Keffelay ended up being about two-page. in the book. Now I did, you know, I wrote a long blog series on Keffelay and I actually went back and edited all those blogs, refined them and posted those blogs in one long document summarizing all of my research on Keffelay. It's posted at TheologyNorrah.com. You can download

it for free. It's like a 20 plus thousand word tedious document. But I just wanted to have my research just publicly available so people can see why I arrived at certain conclusions that I did. You know, the book is just over, it's about 300 pages. But that's the final draft ended up being 300 pages. Earlier drafts were like 500 pages, much to my publisher's chagrin. I was contracted for a book. I think a book was like supposed to be, I don't know, the original contract, 50,000 words, which is, you know, 250 page book. And I told my publisher kind of early on in my research, I'm like, yeah, I don't think I'm going to be able to make that word down. I need some grace here.

So they gave me some extra. It kicked me down an extra 10 or 15,000 words. So the book came in longer than contracted, but much shorter than it could have been. In fact, yeah, I remember looking at an earlier draft of the manuscript. I kid you not, it was like 120,000 words. I'm like, okay, I need to shave off. 60,000. I need to cut this thing at half. So what I ended up doing is, you know, there's some stuff that I just flat out cut and it is, I'm not really great at keeping track of stuff I cut. So there's,

there's things that are just lost in the sands of time, as they say. But there's other chunks of my research that I ended up putting, posting on my website. I think I have like four or five different lengthy papers of extra research on my website Theology and Raw, which you can check out. They are much more scholarly. Some of them are just an absolute snore to read. But I just, again, wanted to make public, okay, here is some extra research that I only had a space to summarize in the book. So I'm training for my first marathon. It's actually a half marathon, but that's still a long distance for me to run. I'm 50 years old. So I've been looking at a bunch of different supplements and protein powders to help me with my endurance and my recovery. And here's what I found.

There's a lot of brands out there promising you the world. But since it's such a low regulation industry, a lot of these brands cut corners, skip testing and don't disclose the ingredients that they're using. That's exactly why I've partnered with Momentus. They've built a reputation as the high trust brand in a low trust category by holding themselves to a higher bar, what they call the momentous standard. It's their commitment to doing things the right way, not the easy way. And right now, Momentus is offering our listeners up to 35% off your first order with promo code TITR. Just head over to LiveMomenus.com and use the promo code TITR for up to 35% off your first order. That's livemometis.com promo code TITR. If you've been listening for a while, you already know that I'm a big fan of Wild

Alaskan company. I've always loved seafood, but I never knew how to buy it or cook it. So I basically only ate seafood in restaurants the few times a year I could afford to eat seafood in restaurants. But that all changed when I learned about Wild Alaskan Company. Wild Alaskan is the best way to get wild caught nutrient dense seafood delivered directly to your door. My last box that I got was filled with three types of salmon, Pacific Halibate, and Pacific Cod, all perfectly portioned and ready to go. They also have hundreds of recipes and guides for cooking fish on the website. Not all fish are the same. Get wild seafood that you can trust. Go to wildalaskan.com forward slash t-ITR for $35 off your first box of premium wild caught seafood. Okay, so that's

wildalaskan.com slash t-I-TR for $35 off your first order. Thanks to Wild Alaskan company for sponsoring this episode. What do I do for the rest of the book? Well, Chapter 1 does, dig into, chapter one digs into Genesis 1 to 3. The title is Adam Eve and Genesis 1 to 3. And what I wanted to do is I just wanted to analyze all the arguments that I grew up with. And some of them were arguments that I didn't, wasn't aware of. I, you know, as I researched as passage as I read books on women and ministry as I read books just on Genesis 1 to 3 and many journal articles. I, you know, I came up with what I think is kind of like the five or six main arguments surrounding the question of women and men and their, you know, the question of

authority. Does man have some kind of authority over a woman based on the creation account? And this is a very significant question. Some people say it is the main passage. Like, everything stands or falls on how we read Genesis 1 to 3 or 1 to 2 in particular. I think that's a little overstated, but it clearly is very significant. In fact, Paul in two key passages, refers to the creation of Adam and Eve in a way that would seem to suggest that man has some kind of authority over women. So I'm thinking of 1st Corinthians chapter 11 versus 8 to 9 and 1st Timothy chapter 2 verses 13 to 4. 14, where Paul refers to the order of creation. Well, he refers to the fact that woman was created from man, not man for woman, from woman. And, you know, woman was created for man, not woman, not man for

women in First Corinthians 11. And I dive into those passages at great length in the book. In fact, by far the longest chapter in the book is on First Timothy. I think I spend like 50 pages on First Timothy, chapter two and three because it's a really important chapter. And lots of research done on that chapter, I'd wait through just piles of literature and do a ton of word studies and syntactical analysis and all those fun things that Bible nerds like me like to do.

So I do get into those two Pauline passages. But for chapter one, I just wanted to read, I wanted to understand Genesis 1 to 3 on its own terms. What was the author trying to communicate here in terms of male-female relations. So one of the arguments I look at, the first one is, you know, that Adam and Eve are exercising mutual rule according to Genesis 1. So a lot of egalitarians point this out that, you know, they criticize complementarians

for just kind of rushing to Genesis 2 to determine man's authority of a woman. and a lot of egalitarians are right, I think, to say, well, what about Genesis 1? What does Genesis 1 have to contribute to our conversation here? And egalitarians point out that, you know, in Genesis 1, male and female are created completely equal, mutual. They're both created in God's image. Male and female, he created them, Genesis 1-27.

Both are commissioned to, rule over creation. The birds in the sea in the animal kingdom in particular. And so the only ruling language that occurs in Genesis 1 or 2 really ascribes mutual rule to Adam and Eve. And there is no hint of any kind of like hierarchy in Genesis 1 of a man ruling over woman. It's just male, female, together ruling over creation. I, you know, I think that's a great argument. certainly Genesis 1 precedes Genesis 2. And yet, you know, complementarians, they read Genesis 1 too, and they agree that Genesis 1 establishes ontological equality between man or women

or both to mediate God's rule. But complementarians would argue that the chapter doesn't detail how man and women will collaborate to subdue and rule the earth. that comes in Genesis 2, where their individual roles are spelled out. And man's authority says a complementarian, man's authority of a woman exists within a framework of ontological equality. And I think that, so I, yeah, to show my cards a little bit, I don't, I personally haven't been and I'm still not impressed with arguments for an egalitarian position that. stem from ontological equality. Arguments that go something like both are created equal, both bear God's image, therefore there can be no authority between man and woman. They must both be

quote unquote equal. And I just, I don't think ontological equality necessitates or demands that there couldn't be some authority structure between man and woman. I mean, think about this way. we have authority structures today. We have bosses and non-bosses and leaders and non-leaders, but both a pastor and non-pasture are both ontologically equal. If you work a secular job, your boss is in charge of you, right? Or has authority over you on some level,

but you're both ontologically equal. So I don't think ontological equality demands that there cannot be some kind of authority structures. So all that to say, I could, I don't know, With this first argument, I could see both sides. I don't think this just settles the issue. Okay, look at Genesis 1. Both male and female are ruling over creation.

Therefore, whatever happens to Genesis 2, it must be irrelevant for any kind of argument that a man is in authority over the woman. At the same time, it is interesting that the only explicit ruling language will get to some implicit possible ruling language in Genesis 2, but the one clear ruling language is described to male and female both in Genesis 1. And Genesis 1 occurs before Genesis 2.

Even if you think there's a two different creation accounts, literarily, canonically, it comes before. So yeah, I don't know. I feel like I was kind of just undecided with this argument. I don't think it can determine the issue. I do think we need to wait through some of the issues in Genesis 2. Okay, so the first, this is the second argument I deal with, you know,

why was Adam created first? And this is, I'm going to say, probably the main argument for a more complementarian view that the creation account ascribes authority to Adam over Eve. And this is not just for Adam and Eve, but this creates a principle, a pattern for you can say the rest of humanity or you can maybe say more specifically for the people of God if you want to go that route. But either way, there's some kind of authority. Adam possesses some kind of authority over Eid because he was created first. Tom Shriner, who I love, major complementarian scholar, he says that the, you know, the Hebrew reader would be disposed to read the second creation account in terms of primogenitor, where the firstborn male has authority over the younger brothers

after the father dies. And so since God, that's unquote, since God created Adam first, he has authority over Eve who came after him. Well, I used to think this is kind of a slam dunk. You know, I've been studied the Old Testament. I'm very familiar with the primogeniture principle, and that was alive and well in the ancient near east. But, you know, there's several, as I tug into this, I'm like, well, several things don't quite match up. The primogeniture principle had to do with the older brother in relationship to his younger brothers. The older brother, when the father dies, yes, he would receive kind of the patriarchal status and receive authority delegated from the father after the death of the father. And he would have authority over the rest of his brothers

and the household as a whole. A few problems, though, Adam and Eve are not siblings or spouses. Eve is not his younger brother. They're not, you know, they're not. You know, they're not, they're not, he's not the, Adam's not the first born, he's the first created. They don't, you know, there's no father who died. He can say, well, God's the father. Well, he's not dead. I'm not dead yet. What's that from?

Is that from Monty Python? No, holy grail. That's not on the book. I should have put that in the book. I'm not dead yet. So it's, it's, the primogenitor principle doesn't really map neatly a upon Adam and Eve. There's several problems there. Most significantly, though, throughout scripture, God often gives priority to the secondborn or last born, not the firstborn.

So, Isaac over Ishmael, Jacob, not Esau, Joseph not his older brothers, Ephraim, not Manasseh, Perez, not Zara. And this pattern is repeated throughout the Old Testament and on into the new. David is chosen over several brothers to be the king and the conduit for the messianic promises. So yes, there was a primogenitor principle in the ancient Near East, but God, theologically, was really fond of overturning that principle. I think that's a, that raises in my mind significant questions over the seeing Adam as authority over Eve simply because he was born. first. Poss is possible.

It's possible. And that's kind of how I end up working through a lot of these arguments in Genesis 1 and 2. I'm like, I can see where you would get that, but that argument isn't really failproof. I think this argument about the first, you know, Adam being created first,

the one argument that I thought was the strongest for a complementarian position, I think, is actually one of the weakest. I think it has several problems. At the very least, we can't just say, well, Adam is created first. Therefore, you know, he has authority over Eve. I think that would be a lazy and quite naive argument. Now, it is true that First Timothy, too, does reference the first born, first created, you know, Adam being created first, not Eve as part of his argument that women shouldn't teach or exercise authority over a man. First Timothy chapter two, verse 12 and 13. So there is that. But, you know, Again, I'm trying to deal with what is the author of Genesis? What is he trying to communicate here? I'll get to First Timothy later.

And maybe that's what maybe Paul is drawing a primogenitor principle out of his reading of Genesis 2. But I, you know, there's lots of complexities in that passage. So I don't want to just, again, half-hazardly just say, wow, First Timothy, 2.13, boom, done deal. It's like, well, no, we have to understand the text on its own terms. And then we have to go deal with latter interpretations of that text and all the issues. use that surround this complex passage. So that's where I leave that argument. I don't think it's clear that it establishes Adam's authority over Eve.

Another argument that I deal with is, you know, Eve being Adam's helper. Does this imply that Adam is in charge? This one, I'm sure so many of you are familiar with this. You know, Eve was created to be a helper fit for Adam, Genesis 218, Genesis 2.20. And some have taken this to mean that Adam held authority over Eve. But as many have pointed out, you know, the word helper, oftentimes, most oftentimes in Scripture, does not refer to somebody with some kind of subordinate status, helping somebody in authority.

There are places, maybe two or three, where it could mean that. But the word helper most often refers to God offering military. help to the nation of Israel. Now, complimentarians are very aware of that. And so, you know, in reading a lot of scholars on this to see, okay, well, helper doesn't imply subordination. That's not how the word is normally used. I was curious to see how complementarians address that. And I honestly wasn't impressed with how they responded.

And in saying that, that is a subjective statement. I'm not impressed. And somebody else says, well, I'm impressed. And my opinion is more important than yours. So, yeah, you can look at how I go back and forth, you know, in dealing with how people address the fact that the word helper does not imply subordination. Ray Orlin recognizes that the Hebrew word etzer, E-Z-E-R, is often used of God help in Israel. But he says, quote, it is entirely possible for God to subordinate himself. a certain sense to human beings.

He does this whenever he undertakes to help us. He does not ungod himself and helping us, but he does stoop to meet, he does stoop to our needs according to his gracious and sovereign will. And Orlin illustrates this point by saying that he subordinates himself to his, that he, Ray Ortland, subordinates himself to his children whenever he helps them with their homework. And Wayne Grutum, one of the most prolific commentarians, he agrees with this. He says, quote, the person doing the help. helps himself in a subordinate role to the person who has primary responsibility for

carrying out the activity. I just, I, okay, get what you're saying. I hear what you're saying. I just, I don't know. I'm just not convinced of their logic here. The question is not whether a person and authority could ever stoop to meet the needs of somebody under their authority. The question is whether the word etzer implies being under the authority of someone else. So Ortland's examples still portray God, the Etzer, in a position of authority, not in a position of submitting to someone else's authority. Likewise, a father doesn't relinquish his authority when he helps his kids with math, or maths, if you're from the UK.

So, yeah, I just wasn't convinced of the argument that says that the word for a helper implies or suggests. or demands that Adam was in authority over, over Eve. And I deal with several other things within the argument. Okay, another argument I deal with is, you know, does Adam's naming of Eve, does this demonstrate his authority over her? So Genesis 223 says, the man said, this is at last,

bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh, she shall be called woman because she was taken out of a man. So there, that calling her woman. that calling her woman is an act of naming. And in the Hebrew mindset or even the ancient Near East worldview, the act of naming somebody else is a declaration of authority. This is true for the most part. Okay.

The classic example is when Nebuchadnezzar's chief eunuchs change the names of Daniel, Hananiah, Michael, and Azariah to belt his, Belt of Chazar, Shadrach, Michak, and Abedegro, Daniel 1-7. Pharaoh Necco did the same thing when he changed the name of Elie Akeem to Jehoiaquim and so on and so forth. There were even in Genesis 1. You have God, you know, calling the day, night and calling, you know, naming different aspects of his creation as a demonstration of his sovereignty over creation. So there's much Old Testament in ancient Near East precedence for sense. that the act of naming is a demonstration of authority.

There are two, there's two, I guess, just two pushbacks to the argument. Number one, while that's true in many cases, it's not true in every case. Later on in Genesis 16, Heagar names God. We're using the same verb, Karah, in the Hebrew. She called the name of the Lord, you are a god of seen, you know.

Genesis 16 verse 13. So I don't think Hagar is demonstrating authority over God when he names God. You see other instances in Genesis 26 where the act of naming is actually relinquishing authority over, in this case, certain wells in Genesis 26. So naming could be a demonstration of authority. Doesn't always. So, you know, it's like, all right, do we just go with the odds? you know, well, many times it is an act of authority, so it must be here. Well, that's, you know, again, it's okay.

That's possible, but I would be, I would be cautious jumping to that conclusion. Also, a second counter argument is that Adam, you know, he doesn't, he calls her woman, but he doesn't name, name her, he doesn't strictly name her here. In fact, he does strictly name her in Genesis 320 when he calls. her name, Eve, and he had that pattern of a calling and naming. But there, that's in the context of the curses and the context of the fall. And both, Complementarians, egalitarians would say, yeah, we probably shouldn't derive a lot of kind of creational principles out of the latter parts of Genesis 3,

because this is now representing kind of things in the fallen order, not the original created order. So, oh, and lastly, there's another counterpoint that I, you know, I've seen people read too much into and some people will not read enough into that Genesis 223 of the name, you know, when Adam names Eve or calls her woman, it's followed by a statement in Genesis 224 that is a bit odd that where the author jumps in and says, this is why man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife and they become one flesh. Well, in Israel's culture, it was the woman who would leave her family and join the home of her husband and mother. But Genesis 224 spins it around.

And the man's the one that leaves and joins his wife's home. It's just a little odd. Now, some people read way too much into this. Like, see, the woman is a free agent, you know, and do whatever she wants. Oh, come on. We're still dealing with an engineer's context here, okay? But it is, it is odd. It is a little disruptive here.

And I kind of, I deal with, okay, how much should we read out of this passage? We don't want to read into it too much. It's not there. And yet we want to appreciate the disruptive nature of Genesis 224 on the heels of Adam calling his, well, naming her woman or calling her woman. See, the word naming isn't there. It's just calling her woman. So again, the naming could me, could, could it suggest authority? I guess it could, but it's not like a, it's certainly not a failproof argument.

The last thing that I deal with in, actually I deal with several other things, but the last main argument I deal with is Genesis 316 where the, it says the man will rule over you. and this has been, yeah, this has been interpreted in many different ways. Genesis 316 is notoriously difficult. In fact, I read a whole book by Dr. Carol Myers called Discovery and Eve that deals with, it's a whole entire book just on this verse and teases out kind of the ancient nary's context on it. It's one of the things. Here's another, like, you know, rabbit trail.

I had a lot of the moments in my study, you know, squirrel. I'll go chase the squirrel for like three months and then realize like that was fascinating, but none of that's going to make it in the book. So yeah, I don't deal extensively with Genesis 316, even though I did quite a deep dive into it. But here's a case where even complementarians, I mean, there's so many different interpretations of Genesis 316 is hard to get kind of a consensus. But with regard to the question of male-female relations in the home or in creation,

then, you know, even Wayne Grudom, who's hardcore complementarian, you know, even he says, like, this isn't, this is a distorted, a distortion of male authority. This is an establishing male authority. We should not read a complementarian view or something out of Genesis 316. Grudem says, quote, we should never try to promote Genesis 316 as something good. And I agree with them based on the study of the word rule and the word desire that occurs there. So of all the arguments for a complementarian view, I think Genesis 316 is probably the least convincing. Yeah. There's other interpretive issues I deal with, you know, briefly, God commanding Adam, not Eve in Genesis 2, 16, and 17.

You know, or why did the serpent approach the woman and not the man in order to deceive her? or Eve being created from Adam's side, which I think is, that's probably another really terrible argument for, for male authority. And not a lot of people, that argument comes up. It's not like a main argument.

So I do deal with it briefly. But I just, I don't think there's much there. So here, let me just read to you. How about my, I'll just read to you my two paragraph conclusion here. The title of this is a summary and lack of conclusion.

I resonate with what Francis Watson says about male leadership in Genesis 2 to 3. Quote, certain interpretive statements are possible, although not explicitly demanded by the text. And I, so that's Watson. I would probably maybe even offer a slightly stronger conclusion. Genesis 1 to 3 alone does not teach male headship over women or husbands' authority over the wives of some universal principle etched into creation. That I'm not. So this is just one. of a one part of a very long complex debate with regard to women leadership. So it doesn't,

I don't think it stands or falls in Genesis 1 or 2. And I'm not even saying Genesis 1 and 2 establishes like an egalitarian view. Like it's, you know, we have a ancient neary's egalitarian, you know, like really establishing, you know, both men and women could be leaders in the church. Like I'm not saying that at all. I'm just saying I don't think the passage is explicitly spelling out a creational principle regarding who's in authority over the other or what kind of leadership positions

can people serve in the church. Some male headship arguments have more merit than others, but none of them is without problems. The two times authority language is employed, it refers to the mutual rule of male and female over creation, Genesis 1, 26, 28, and a negative kind of rule

that husbands wield over their wives in a world cursed by sin, Genesis 316. Still, we need to suspend judgment until we consider two Paul's two illusions to Genesis 2. Again, 1 Corinthians 11 and 1 Timothy 2, my initial glance at these two Pauline passages seems to support a complementarian reading of Genesis. But initial glances won't suffice for such an important topic. We need to roll up her sleeves and spend considerable time working through these texts. Before we get there, I want to keep exploring with the rest of the Old Testament.

says about women and leadership in ancient Israel. And that's what I do in chapter two. So here I'm going to be more brief and just kind of summarize where I end up going in the book. So chapter two is women in the Old Testament. Here I spend a little bit of time looking at the social context of women in ancient Israel. And this was, this is one of the sections that used to be a lot longer. In fact, it could have been a whole entire chapter looking at the social. social context of women in the ancient household. Because I think there's a lot of misunderstandings there. And here I have admittedly been influenced by Carol Myers, if you're familiar with her work on women in the Old Testament,

Carol Myers is a, she's not a religious person. She's, you know, secular Old Testament scholar, archaeologist, historian. But man, she's done some of the most interesting and thorough and thought-provoking work of women in the Old Testament. In fact, she, I mentioned this, I forget where it was. Was it in a podcast?

Maybe not. Maybe it was on Patreon. An article she wrote where I think the title of the article is, was ancient Israel a patriarchal society or something? And she answers no.

And look, Carol Myers is a, you know, she would have every right to want to say, no, the Old Testament's profoundly misogynistic and patriarchal and all these things. And she says, actually, just from a sociological perspective, calling it patriarchal is a little, she would say a little naive and doesn't really match what we know about the complexity, a female agency in the Old Testament world. And I'm, you know, I had a whole section where I was like, we shouldn't use a term patriarching anymore. But then it backed off. I'm like, well, I, you know, I'm not an expert in this. And I don't, I think I mentioned that, you know, some sort of scholars questioned even calling the Old, you know, the Old Testament or ancient Israel patriarchal. But at the very least, Myers and others have established, like, once you enter the world, the Old Testament world, the ancient Near East world, it's just, it's, it's way more complex.

The role of women and female agency is way more complex than what people realize if they just read the Old Testament from a modern perspective. So all that to say, I'd have to boil down this huge section into, you know, a couple of pages or something establishing that. And then I say, you know, I want to look at how I want to highlight, you know, women don't occur nearly as often as men in the Old Testament. For every 10 named men, there's one named woman in the Old Testament. So you can read the Old Testament. Say, oh, this is clearly a drama between God and men, like males. but women do show up and when they show up it's very interesting um and i won't spoil the fun

here but i deal with the all the women in the early chapters of exodus i deal with abigail i deal with i look at the song of song just briefly i'll look at esther um who else do i look at, oh, Rahab, I look at Ruth. Again, just kind of briefly, like, you know, when women pop up at key turning points in the biblical story, what does a text say about them? And what does that mean? And like a lot of things I look at in my book as a whole, there is, I rarely draw like a one-to-one argument for my position or whatever.

Like, you know, I don't want to read too much in these individual things, but I'm trying to like just like look at the cumulative role that that women occupy in God's redemptive story and then kind of pull the pieces together. And so what are some of these are more implications. Some of these are a little more explicit. So when I'm dealing with women in the Old Testament, I don't think there's a whole lot that's, you know, going to directly address the question of women in church leadership. But I just want to get our arms around what the Bible is doing as it includes.

women in its unfolding storyline. And then I focus more specifically on female prophets, in particular Deborah and Holda, and wrestle with whether they should be considered as exercising leadership over men. And then I look at the all-male priesthood. Because even if you say, yes, Holda and Deborah and other female prophets are exercising leadership over men, you have to wrestle with the fact that the priesthood was the established, they were the established teachers in Israel. They were the ones who were commissioned to study and teach the law. They were the teachers.

And the priesthood was all male. So is there an argument there that God was carrying out? You know, even in ancient Israel, that while you had some. you know, female prophets and other things going on when it came to teaching the word of God, God reserved that role to men, even the Old Testament. So I wrestle with that argument. Chapter 3, women in the ministry of Jesus. Clearly Jesus valued women. This is something that I, you know, in the past, I've seen egalitarians. It seemed like they were just like, look, Jesus valued women. Women were awesome. Therefore, they should be elders. It's like,

Well, okay, hold on. Like, hopefully all our churches are valuing women. Hopefully we're all like advocating for and defending and promoting the full ontological equality of men and women. We're all creating God's image of Jesus valued women. But does that mean they should therefore be elders and pastors and preachers and teachers? Like, I mean, does God, I mean, think about the logic there. Does God only value elders and pastors and teachers? Do you only have real value?

if you're a leader in the church, I just think that that the whole framework, I just think that that brings a secular view of leadership to the question. Like, until somebody is in a leadership position in the church, they don't have full value. They're not fully equal or fully ontologically valuable as leaders. It's like, well, that just imports a weird view of leadership,

the leader, non-leader distinction, which is, I think, foreign to the Christian worldview. So all that to say, I do dig into some nitty-gritty, things I deal a lot with how the gospel writers treat women. And I, you know, Jesus does more than simply value women. They're, you know, the gospel writers, especially Mark and Luke and John. Yeah, Mark, Luke and John. Matthew doesn't add a ton to the conversation other than his, you know, he opens with the genealogy where it includes four to five women. But, uh, the other three

Gospels do some very interesting and provocative things in how they're retelling the story of women. But again, does that mean, do the Gospels establish that women can or can't be in church leadership positions? I don't think the Gospels directly address that question, but they do raise some implications that I think are relevant to the debate. Am I being vague enough here? So yes, I deal with Mary Magdalene, you know, the Apostles of Apostles. I deal with the female disciples, you know, Luke 8, 1 to 3. I deal with the women from Galilee. I deal with the Samaritan women.

I deal with most of the main debated, the women that, you know, are, you know, they come up and are debated in the conversation. I do bring up a point that I don't see considered very much in the typical like books on egalitarian complementarianism. I look at Jesus's redefinition of authority in Mark 10 and parallel passages and say, okay, this is the one place where Jesus most directly addresses questions of leadership. and he turns it on its head, the one who serves as a leader. So then I go back and look and see, okay, what is Jesus' redefinition of leadership? The one place where he got to address is the question of leadership.

It's not like he's running around giving like a Titus 1 or 1st Timothy 3 list of qualifications for being a leader. But he does address it in Mark 10 in parallels. So I do kind of refract the question of leadership through the lens of Jesus and look and see how that reshapes how we think about men and women in church leadership. And then, of course, I wrestle with the 12 male apostles. I always thought that was a slam dunk for the complementarian view. And I think it's still a decent argument. But there were some problems with that argument that I hadn't seen before.

So I wrestle with the significance of the two. 12 male apostles. Chapter 4 was a chapter that I did not originally plan on writing. Chapter 4 deals with leadership and the first century house church. And man, this was another squirrel I chased. I got so absorbed with this topic, probably read and research more than I needed to. but I just got so fascinated with understanding the first century house church from a first century context and looked at, you know, yeah, how much I want to give away here?

Okay, let me say this. The whole idea that the church had a ironed out structure of senior pastor and below that senior pastor, elders and below the elders, yeah, maybe other pastors and teachers and then none of them, deacons, that ain't there in the New Testament. I mean, not just according to me, but a lot of scholars who have looked in, I would say almost, you know,

there's scholars that specialize, like leadership and house churches in the first century. Like, that's what they do. Like Andrew Clark has spent like 25 years. What's his area? Well, he's a New Testament scholar, but he's been researching like, leadership in the first century for 25 years.

Like, that's what he does. And there's other people, Robert Banks and others. Oh, who's the guy? Got a book on my shelf that I can't see from here. But, oh, it's on house churches. There's several really significant books on house churches in the first century. Anyway, I got lost in this area. And the one thing, it seems fairly,

now there's no consensus on anything in New Testament scholarship. But one thing that seemed widely agreed upon is that Paul, the New Testament's understanding of leadership is a lot more fluid. It's not super ironed out. Even when we come to the pastoral's, this whole idea that you have like elders at the top and the pastors and teachers under them or, you know, like our modern day assumptions about the first century house church leadership structure, I think needs correction. I'm not saying our modern day structures are wrong or right.

I'm just saying they don't map very. very neatly upon the diversity of how leaders were identified and described in, in according to the New Testament letters, especially in the letters of Paul. So I spent a lot of time unpacking that, you know. There you know Paul rarely even mentions, mentions overseers and elders. I think overseers and elders are only mentioned like three of his 13 letters. And yet he identifies leaders with other terms all throughout his letters. So I don't think we should just, yeah, I think we need to not take an ironed out view of leadership as if it was like, you had these fixed terms and structures throughout that Paul is working with. I think it's way more messing than that.

I also look at things like the significance of house church hosts. Some of you might be familiar with this, but in the first century context, you know, the one who hosted a gathering in the home would assume kind of leadership and responsibility over the people in their home. And then when this raises the question, okay, well, churches were meeting in homes and did the host simply assume some sort of like leadership over the gathering? Sociologically, you would kind of say, well, sure, yeah, like, why wouldn't they, you know? But then the new testament, mentions at least four different women who hosted house churches. Mary in Acts 12, Nympha and Clashions 4, Lydia in Acts 16, Priscilla and various passages. And so possibly

Phoebe, it's more implied than explicitly stated. So what do we do with that? I wrestle with that. I think there's, you know, that can be a pretty complex issue. And I had to dig deep into the significance of first century house churches and the hosts and what that meant and how much is there anything in the text of scripture that supports our assumption about house church hosts exercising leadership in the gathering at their home so I deal a lot with some sociological and historical research there that was that was fun just from a research perspective again probably maybe dove too deep into that. Then I, well, I don't know.

Can you ever go too deep? I look at other things. So apart from like pastor, elder overseer, those are kind of the three familiar leadership terms. You know, it's interesting. Pastors only use once as a noun to refer to a church leader in Ephesians 4 of 11, where, you know, Paul describes prophets, apostles, and pastor teachers. So that's not really a primary part of Paul's leadership vocabulary.

Overseer, of course, he identifies in 1 Timothy 3, and he mentions overseers in Philippians 1-1-1. Elder is mentioned in Titus 1. And throughout Acts, you have it throughout Acts, elders, and obviously 1st Peter 5. but Paul uses a range of other terms that describe leaders. They're not leadership terms per se. Like the term doesn't mean leader, but Paul often uses various terms to describe leaders, co-worker, servant is the one that he often uses to describe a leader.

Or even those who work hard in the Lord. I look into that phrase and see in virtually every case, case, those who work hard in the Lord through other passages we see. Well, he's describing people who are doing leadership type stuff, not in every case, but in most cases. There's other terms, proist amy. It's a Greek word that means like to manage or care for. And it's a, it's a leadership term, less familiar than, you know, overseer or elder. So all that to say, we need to really step back and understand leadership according to a first century perspective and not simply map our current structures onto the New Testament and say, can women fill these roles? I'm like,

well, let's let's hit pause on doing that. Let's just look at the first century house church context and the leadership terms and phrases that it uses rather than importing our own. So honestly, chapter four is probably, I don't know, maybe the most significant chapter in the book because it kind of reframed how we even approach the conversation. Chapter five is all about Roman 16, where Paul names a bunch of women, a lot of them are doing things for the gospel, but just because you're doing things for the gospel doesn't mean you're a leader in the church. That's something that, again, want to make sure we're all cautious about. But I do camp out on three women in particular where Paul describes in interesting ways,

Phoebe, Priscilla, and Junia. Junior? Good old Junior. I'll show Junior again here. This is our run day. This is our portrait of Junia. I don't know if that's Junia, but this is cover of the book. Romans 16.7, does Paul call Junia an apostle?

It is more complicated and very widely disputed than some people think. If somebody just says, Paul calls June and Apostle, therefore, she's a, you know, women can be in leadership. Just to know if somebody says that, well, doesn't even sound mean. almost said they're naive, they're ignorant. Whatever. Like, I think there is an answer and I do give an answer to the question is June and an apostle. But man, it's, there's some synch, there's some linguistic difficulties there.

There's syntactical difficulties. I had to wade through loads of like cross references in Greek papyri. And again, this is another squirrel I chase. I'm like, oh, this is more, this is a common theme of my book. oh, this is more exegetically complex than I originally thought. And even if Junia is called an apostle, what kind of apostle? The word apostle is used in diverse ways in the New Testament. So I do wrestle with all that and come to a conclusion, which you can read about in chapter five.

All right. So quickly, chapter six, I deal with female prophets in the New Testament. It's not enough to say, there's female prophets, which obviously there are. Therefore, women can be in leadership. It's like, well, hold on. Like, what's the function of prophets? What's the nature of New Testament prophecy? Is it the same, similar, or different than Old Testament prophecy?

Is prophecy even authoritative in the New Testament? These are issues that people, aside from the women of leadership question, they have wrestled with. Chapter 7, I dive deep into Ephesians 5. So I don't, my book is focused on women in church leadership, not husband, wife, male, female relations in the home. although I do think they are significantly related. But I don't focus nearly as much time, nor have I thought through as thoroughly, you know, the question of husband and wife in the home.

But Ephesians 5, I do deal with the whole, you know, women submit to their husbands because man is the authority, or man is head over a woman, and just as Christ is ahead. the church. I deal extensively with what Paul is saying and what he's doing rhetorically with his use of Keffalae head there in Ephesians 5. 1 Corinthians 11 versus 6 to 6 versus 2 to 16 or actually I limited it to verses 2 to 12. This is the most difficult passage in all of Paul's letters hands down. I am technically a Pauline

scholar, if it sounds nerdy, it is nerdy, super nerdy. That's my PhDs in New Testament or in Paulian theology. So I've worked through some really difficult passages in Paul. I wrote, you know, in my dissertation, I wrote on two of the most difficult passages in Paul. Romans 932 to 10, what is it? Well, 10, 9. And Galatians 3 versus 10 to 14. Two very, very difficult passages. How is Paul citing scripture? What's his argument here? What does he mean by law? Is he contradicting himself? Lots of issues there. So I thought, I was like, okay, I'm well versed in difficult Pauline passages. And then I got the First Corinthians 11. I said, this one is just something else. And every responsible Pauline scholar that is written on First Corinthians 11 says the same thing. This is the most difficult passage in Paul. some people wonder if Paul even wrote it or there's a really provocative argument by my friend Lucy Pepiott some of you are familiar with I didn't actually deal I mean I've read her

her books and have thought through it and I don't think my did that make it into the book I'm not sure if my interaction with Lucy made it into the book but Lucy basically argues and she's not the only one, actually. I didn't know this. I thought she was the one that the only one that has argued this, but there's been several scholars who have argued that Paul in 1st Corinthians 11 is interacting with Corinthian slogans. So all this stuff that's really seems like really misogynistic. Well, that's the Corinthians. And then Paul responds to those seemingly misogynistic statements. It irons out the passage. I mean, like smooths it out. No doubt. If you read the passage in light of Lucy's argument,

and others. I'm like, oh, well, that does read smoothly. But it's just, it's hard. It's almost like a, what do they call it? It's a non-fossil fire. But it's just hard. It's like, well, it's hard to prove that he's citing Corinthian's slogans. Kind of hard to disprove it.

It's kind of, I don't know. Like, I think the explanatory power is maybe the main strength of argument. But I was like, you know, I don't know. I want to see if there's other ways to understand this past. And I think there are. I think there are. My chapter on First Corinthians is 11, kid you not,

went through like 15 different drafts. Even toward the end of my writing, I was editing, you know, going through my book and I get the first Corinthiansbathes 11. Like, you know what? I need to rewrite this chapter. So I'd spend a week, you know, rewriting it, rearranging,

then sit on it for a few weeks, and then come back to it. I'm like, this is crap. I need to rewrite it. Rewote it, rerote it, rerote. It is, it is, it is, it is tough. It is a tough chapter. So my, my conclusions, my suggestive readings of that passage are, are held with an open hand.

I think everybody's interpretation of 1st Corinthians 11 should be held with an open hand. But I, I, I feel fairly good about how I'm, I think it makes, it does make sense. It satisfies a lot of the exegetical problems. But yeah. I'll hope to, yeah, see what you think. Give me a little grace. That chapter is tough, okay? The one thing is the first one is 11.

I mean, it clearly says women were prophesying and praying in front of men in church. That's the only ministry things, activities that are mentioned in the chapter. So on the one hand, I kind of begin the chapter saying, with regard to women in church leadership, this passage doesn't really, I mean, all it says is they're praying and prophesying. And it doesn't say those are necessarily. doesn't necessarily say those are leadership positions, but those are the only ministry positions named, and men and women are doing those equally. But you do have this question of authority. Does Paul say that women can only pray and prophesy while under the authority

of their husband? So with the head covering, representing the authority of the husband. And, you know, some would say, yeah, okay, so it could argue for like a soft complementarian position. Like, well, soft complementarianism, it says women can teach and preach under the authority of the elders, not necessarily husbands and elders are nowhere to be found in First Corinthians 11. So it doesn't really contribute for or against a soft complementarian position. So anyway, I, but it does raise questions about men and women and authority, which I give a suggestive response. First Corinthians 14, women be silent. Just don't. say a peep in church.

I wrestle with the four main arguments regarding how to interpret that passage, including an argument that says Paul didn't write this passage. Gordon Fee and Phil Payne and others. I wrestle with the view. Wow. Yeah, you can check it out. There's like four main approaches to that passage. This one was, okay, this is the only time I'll say this.

First Corinthians 14 was among the easier chapters to write. once I really studied it and looked at the terminology in chapter 14 versus 34 to 35 and did just kind of some word studies on how Paul uses these keywords both in the same chapter in chapter 14 and elsewhere. I'm like, oh, this doesn't, if I just read it quickly in English, it's like, ooh, yeah, this is startling. Why does Paul tell women to shut up in church? But then once you study the Greek terminology here, it's like, oh, this actually doesn't seem that difficult.

Doesn't seem as difficult as like chapter 11 or other passages. So chapter 10, the last main chapter, I deal with First Timothy 2 to 2 to 3. Please forgive me for the 50 page chapter. It used to be 150, okay? So even if you think this one's like laborious and tedious, which it is, it's tough. It's a slug to get through even for me, and I wrote it. I just wanted to be thorough. You know, so many people's views on this, well, so many

complementarians at least, their view kind of not fully, but largely stands or falls in this passage, or at least this is a, like the main, one of the main arguments. I really wanted to be super, super, super thorough and clear and thorough, probably too thorough. So yeah, 50 pages on that. And then toward the end, I deal with chapter three. and the whole, you know, an overseer must be a husband of one wife.

So Paul seems to clearly say that in terms of being an overseer, not necessarily teacher or preacher, but being an overseer must be a man. Because only a man could be a husband of one wife. I wrestle with that verse and arguments and counterarguments for and against the elder male-only elder view. so-called soft complementarian position. Then I conclude by landing the plane. I literally wrote the conclusion on a plane from Heathrow to Boise, like a 10-hour flight.

And so this is, okay, fun story. This didn't make it into the book. But because I travel a lot, I have a pretty high status with Delta. And as high status. Yeah. So, yeah. I'm pretty, pretty high up there.

And I've never, this has never happened to me, probably never happened will happen again. But I got a compliment, complimentary. Complementarian? No, not complimentary. I got a, not can I even say the word. Complementary upgrade to first class on an international flight. These are like $5,000 seats. Have you ever looked like, I want to travel first class to London?

It's like, yeah, it's like four or five grand. So good luck. And so I got upgraded for free. So I literally sat in this first class luxury seat. It was like an office. I had just like whole desks the side of me. The bed or the seat would lay down. I just whole like compartment in front of,

I turned that thing into a flying library. It was the people were looking at me all weird. I didn't recline the entire time. I sat there for eight hours with my books lined up on the window with, like, you know, whatever. They even brought me dinner and I told them, bring it later. Like, I delayed my dinner by like six hours because I was just like, I want to write this conclusion and I want to finish it before I land.

So I did actually land, you know, the conclusion is called and ended the plane. And it refers to where I wrote the conclusion and, theologically, where I landed the plane. I state really clearly where I land. So that is the book. And I hope you will enjoy it. So far, I've gotten good responses from early readers of the book. The one thing I was really concerned about was, here's the main thing.

I wanted to be, first of all, fair with how I'm interacting with the different issues, the arguments. I wanted to be thorough and yet readable. That was so hard. Like my bent is always going to be towards the academic. Like, it was, man, I had these, like, extents. of footnotes, just like crossing every tea and dotting every eye and siding 15 sources, the show that I've done my homework. And I had to weed a lot, not all of it, but a lot of that out

because it was just made the book way too big. And I didn't, I just kept feeling the urge to make it an academic book. And I was like, no, I want to keep the academic precision, but I want it to be readable to people without a seminary degree, as I said in the introduction, because I think this is an important topic, lots of people. I think for some of the more popular level books that I read on the topic, I'm like, ooh, these are academically a little thin. And the academic books I read on the topic, I'm like, ooh, I don't, I know some people that aren't going to, this is going to be just so laborious and boring and lengthy. So I really wanted to find that sweet spot of being academically and exegetically responsible, being fair to different sides, but also writing a way

that is readable. And so far, the early feedback I've gotten from people that thought at some many degrees is they said, no, it's super readable. So I'm really excited about that. So anyway, comes out March 3rd. But if you want, if it's of interest, go ahead and pre-order it now. It helps to pre-order the book rather than buy it after. So if you know you're going to get it, encourage you to pre-order it before March 3rd. So all right, folks. This is, I guess, the last of my three-year off and on podcast about, by view of women in church leadership, because after March 3rd, everybody will know where I landed. And then, yeah, then I'll keep podcasting, but it'll be from that perspective.

I also have a lot of interviews coming out on different podcasts. Gosh, let's see. I was on other podcasts interviewing me about the book. So I was on Lisa Harper's podcast. I was on Lisa Bevere's podcast, Lecra's podcast, KBien Amin. Southside Rabbi, Mike Erie, Latasha Morrison, Lee Camp. Gosh, I'll be on Carrie Newhoff's podcast and, yeah, a whole bunch of others. So anyway, if I don't know if you're familiar with any of those, but you'll probably see me

talking about the book on various other places. So anyway, thanks for listening to you guys and we'll see you next time on Theology and Ruff.