Theology in the Raw - Did Women Serve As Leaders in Early Christianity? Drs. Lynn Cohick and Amy Brown Hughes

Episode Date: April 23, 2026

There's still time to register for Exiles Minneapolis! April 30-May 2, 2026. Join my Patreon community for bonus episodes, Zoom chats, and more! Dr. Lynn Cohick is New Testament Professor at Houston Christian University and has written numerous books, include Christian Women in the Patristic World, which she co-authored with my other guest today. Dr. Amy Brown Hughes received her Ph.D. in historical theology with an emphasis in early Christianity from Wheaton College and is an associate professor of theology at Gordon College. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

They were dying alongside men. I'll say that with the martyrs. Men and women were seen as models, imitatio Christi, dying the death of the faithful follower. Christianity would not be what it is now without women's contributions to it. And we're not just talking about small peripheral things. We're talking like the core doctrines of the church. Trinitarian conversations, Christology, we're talking about all of that. It would not be what it is without them. friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology. My guest today is yet again the one-and-only Dr. Lynn Cahick, who is a New Testament Professor at Houston Christian University, and she's written numerous books, including this outstanding book right here, Christian Women in the Patristic World, which she co-authored with my other guest today, namely Dr. Amy Brown-Hughes, who received her PhD in historical

theology with an emphasis in early Christianity from Wheaton College and is an associate professor of theology at Gordon College. Okay, we talk all things women in the early church. We're women leaders. What did they do? Were there women bishops, elders, press buddhorses or whatever? What's the significance of female martyrs? Who was Thakla and who was Macrina?

And what role did women play in the theological shape and contribution of the early church? We address all that stuff and many other things. So I just could have talked to Lynn and Amy for hours. They're just oozing with wealth and wealth. They have a well, I was mixing metaphors. They're not oozing with wealth, I don't think. But they are oozing with knowledge and a wealth of wisdom of the early church. So anyway, without further ado, please welcome back to the show, the one-only Dr. Lynn Cohic.

And for the first time, the one-only doctor, Amy Brown Hughes. All right, welcome to Theology Dara Lynn and Amy. Lynn, you've been on several times. Amy, this is your first time. So welcome to Theology and Nora. Very excited to talk to both of you. So I, as you know, and as many listeners know, you know, I finished a research project on women and church leadership covering the Bible. I mean, not everything in the Bible, but that was my, you know, span of research. And as a biblical scholar, I, you know, my knowledge of the early church just gets really fuzzy.

And so even more, you know, recently, I've gotten so. many questions about women in the early church. It's like, okay, well, if you're right about what the Bible says about women in all areas of leadership, how come no one in the early church agreed with that? Like, what do you do with that? Or, you know, I've heard different things. Like, no, actually women played lots of leadership roles. Other people were like, no, they didn't. And so there's this, as you know, you know. But you guys wrote an outstanding book Christian women in the Patrick World where you cover a lot of things. I enjoyed the book so much. I had so many. I mean, everything was like an eye-opening moment because I don't know how much to go on.

But your stuff, especially on female martyrs, was just so, so good. So I don't, let's just start. Can you give us maybe a, I just could take a whole hour, but either of you can jump in. Like, give us a, can you paint like a really big 30,000 foot picture of the, role of women in the first few centuries after the close of the New Testament. Would that be a good place to start just to kind of get our arms around the topic? And then I want to dive into some specific questions. Sure. Len, do you want to start? And then I'll pick up after, you know, the earlier time. Sure, sure. Yeah. I kind of go up to Constantine and then Amy takes the hard stuff after Constantine. That's sort of how we arm wrestled for it. Yeah, I think what we were wanting to do,

was push away kind of what you were saying, Preston, push away all of the ideas that are floating around and really try to get into these second through fifth centuries in the historical data that we have, which includes not only church orders, but also inscriptions and artwork, to try and paint an actual picture of what women were doing at this time, men and women together. And the, the, what we found overall was the tremendous influence that women had. And at, at all levels, but the language that was used to describe that influence felt, like, to me, at least as a someone in the New Testament, felt a bit foreign because it, it, it sort of fit with the Greek of the New Testament, but there were new words that were used. And then you get the Latin

in there as well with the Roman church, plus the structure of second century and beyond, we're even much more Gentile church that is engaging with this broader culture. And so it felt not like a completely different world, but it did feel different. And we wanted to to understand that world in its own terms and describe what women and men were doing without, you know, they were doing it alongside men. So that also became clear. They were dying alongside men. I'll say that with the martyrs.

You know, it was men and women were seen as models, imitatio Christi, dying the death of the faithful follower, both men and women. And women inspired men. I would say that's one of the takeaways that I had in this age up to Constantine when the church was struggling to one degree or another with its survival. Men at times could be inspired by women's faithfulness. That was heartening to hear. Amy, I'll pass a bit of time. So the language piece is pretty important because there's a lot going on in the first few centuries. It is building out of the New Testament, but is definitely different. So that transition from a persecuted minority church.

And now, you know, the church was not persecuted constantly for 300 years. There were significant periods of time where the church was, and Christians were building churches and doing just fine. You know, there were times, there was always prejudice and such as Christianity was an illegal religion, that is a superstitio. But there were lots of superstitios. They were not the only one. So it depended on who was in power and where as far as how Christians were negotiating around that. And women were right in the middle of all of that. I think the thesis of the whole book really is that Christianity would not be what it is now without women's contributions to it. Right. There's no doubt in our minds about that. And we're not just talking about small peripheral things. We're talking like the core doctrines of the church. We're talking the Trinitarian Conversations, Christology.

We're talking about all of that. It would not be what it is without them. Even if they didn't, even if they weren't signing onto their names on a conciliar document, it didn't matter because they were having the conversation. before they got to the council or around the council. And I think some of the, for us, was really kind of pulling apart a lot of the assumptions around what was where, what was happening in the early church. Like, oh, they were constantly persecuted for 300 years.

Well, no. So what did that actually look like? What did it look like to be a martyr? And then what happened when that time was over, this transition from being martyrs going into the building of the ascetic tradition. Like, what is that? That tends to be very foreign to us, even though it is not foreign to us. And we can get into that a minute if we want to. Like, we sort of think, oh, these people are so weird. They're sleeping on the floor and they're not eating. Like, what's wrong with them? They hate their bodies. And I'm just like, have you talked to an

Olympian anytime recently? We just had the Boston Marathon. I'm like, y'all, we understand this. We just don't make the connection in our brain. And also just the Roman Empire was really changing a lot during this period of time. Laws were changing. Marriage laws were changing. Inheritance laws were changing. It was a wildly convulsive time of leadership with who's in power and who's not in power. And women were right in the middle of all that from the bottom to the top and all the way through.

So you said bottom of the top and I, I'm going to kind of maybe ask questions the way I'm receiving them. And maybe the very question isn't the right question, whatever. But like, there were, as far as I understand, like women did not serve in all positions of quote unquote leadership. Like female, there was no like female bishops or female elders, presbyters or whatever. Is that? I often hear that. I don't, I think that's true, but is that, is that true? And I'm going to add that even if they weren't, I do want to explore many other ways in which women were leading in other ways. So a couple of years ago, for the first time I went into the church of St. Prasities in Rome. I don't know, Preston, if you've been there or Amy, have you been in that particular church? I have not been in that one, no. So there is a sort of side chapel where you will find Theodora Episcopa, except that the mosaic has been chiseled out to try and make the term Episcopa,

which is bishop, masculine. And they did, let me just say, a horrible job. If you, if, you know, it's sort of like you write in permanent ink, mosaic is kind of like permanent ink. And you can't easily change it. But this Theodora is the mother of Pope Pascal the first. This, they think this was put in around, well, he, he was Pope 17 to 824. So somewhere in there.

And she clearly is listed as a bishop. And, and I think, I mean, I saw it. my own eyes and I you know both what she was and the person who followed after and was charged with changing the mosaic so there is um there's one like big example right there um in rome that anybody can can visit and see so yes there were that that seems that's one example and it's fairly i mean 700 years after the due time are there earlier examples of something similar to that? There are, we have other inscriptions of, you know, of using the term episcopa. And a lot of it is in, uh, inscriptions. And, and you'd be right to say that there aren't many of them. Um, but we do

have evidence of them. Yes. And, and for me, the question isn't so much about, um, like, were there women in these positions of authority? Because there were, uh, the question becomes, why wasn't that more evident than you see? Like what happened in those spaces? And because I think sometimes we look at this and go, well, that must be that must be theoretically correct. Because that's what happened in the early church. I was like, you know, as a historical theologian of early Christianity,

I'm just going to say, I have a lot of dialogue with a lot of people in the early church. and there's a lot of things that I go, you know what? I'm going to have some chats with some people in eternity, right? And so there's some of this had to do with there were some pretty intense groups pretty early on that privileged women that were doing some things that the rest of the church were not fond of. So they got a little bit nervous with some of the ways that some of these groups. were bringing women in in leadership. So there's one, there's some, there's a few of those groups. Like Montanis, for example.

Montanus, and we know Turtolian was influenced by them. And we later, how many, I don't know, a couple centuries later, that whole group is really denigrated, you know, overall for being a little too Pentecostal. I don't know, Amy, is that? Yeah. They were Orthodox, though. It wasn't like there were agnostics where they were.

So what's funny about them, I actually do a case. I do it. Yeah, it depends on who you read. So I do a case study in one of my classes on them because technically, like according, they were pre, they began pre-Nicaa. So it's really hard to kind of negotiate around. But they last at a really long time. And several church councils tried to put the kibosh on them. And they just kept being popular in different sections of the space.

And they were kind of wild eschatologically. So they were waiting for the kind of imminent return of Christ, which they were not the only group, but that was something that they did. They had women prophetesses and women that preached and baptized. And they also paid people to preach, which interestingly tended to be the thing that most of the leadership at the time was really mad at. They were less mad at their eschatology. They were even less mad at. I mean, later people had an issue with the women and authority.

They had issues with people being paid. Salaries as pastors. So that'd be wildly popular in America today. So, I mean, part of that, the Didaq, one of the earliest documents we have, of kind of around the time of the New Testament, that the church was passing around kind of a church order document, very basic, like, how do you do church? Here's some prayers.

Here's this. Here's that. Here's how to baptize. They have this whole section in there about profits. If somebody comes into your town and they want to, you know, as a prophet and they come and say it with you, that's great. But if they stay too long and if they ask you for money, that means they're false. Oh, wow. So there was some, there was some structure around this that made the Montanus suspect.

There was also the Gnostics that were using a lot of, that there was a lot of kind of language around theological. there that caused some people issues and there was a lot of women that were kind of swept up into those spaces that made a lot of the early Christians nervous as well. So there was some theological things and also when you have a growing movement and you're trying to figure out how to connect people together, you look at the organization around you to help you. Kind of like nowadays, like a lot of times churches, especially larger churches will, you know, over the last, you know, few decades and such had really looked at the business world for thinking about leadership structures and think about organizational structures. Well, the early

church did the same thing, except that they looked at the Roman government. And the Roman government doesn't have any place for women. So, I mean, like it's in the, in the exact story, Lynn could probably talk even more sort of thoroughly about this, but it's almost in their own organizational structure that they, I don't want to say it was an accident because I think, for some it probably was on purpose, but in sort of the structuring around the early church, some of the more marginalized people got squeezed out the sides because they didn't fit. That doesn't mean that they were saying, oh, that's bad. Those people are bad.

We don't want them in leadership. It became, unfortunately, it became a, in, if my 30,000 foot read is it becomes habit. you fall into the trenches that you're aware of. You trust the system that you know best. And therefore you trust the people in those leadership structures. Yeah. Real quick, before we get the lid, so you're saying that like understanding the role of women

in particular and women and leadership in general, we would have to first understand some of the ecclesiological complexity of the day where they're getting their structure from, that kind of plays a role into where women did or didn't. I would say it plays a significant role. So much so that you see the early Christians actually fighting against their own system. So in language and so a good example of this is actually Gregory of Nissa's sister Macrina.

Oh, yeah. Where at the beginning of his life of Macrina that he writes about her, he talks about how he doesn't have, he literally says, I don't have any other word to term you, but to call you a man. And he's playing around with the Greek there. Basically, there's no way to call a woman virtuous in the language of the time, like literally with words, without calling her manly, because the root of that term is manliness. To be virtuous was to be manly.

And so he's playing around the words, like, I literally don't have words to describe my sister, is what he's saying. But I'm going to try anyway. I'm going to give her these terms because they belong to her when the society around him would not have said that they did. Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. So they're pushing and pulling against these places.

He calls her, he talks about her as his father, mother, teacher. He uses all these terms. And we see some of this too in the passion of perpetual and felicitas in how the terms that are used around describing perpetua. That was a setup for you, Lynn. Go for it. All right. And I'll just go back even earlier. Thank you to the synagogue.

The synagogue is what we're most familiar with in the Book of Acts. And obviously, Jesus's life. And the synagogue was a very flat organization. It was the place where the Jews in that village organized themselves. Yes, it also was church-ish. You know what I mean? like the word was read and they definitely had Shabbat practices, but it was also a community center where the elders would, you know, help manage the community and was very flat. Certainly it was

flat from a leadership perspective compared to the Romans. And the Romans, there's an argument that's been made, that that was a real frustration to the Romans, that the Jewish culture, especially as reflected in the synagogue was not hierarchical the way the Romans appreciated things. Now, we think, oh, the temple was hierarchical. But even in the temple, it was only a certain tribe or group of men that could be priests. But all Jewish men are going in and out in a lot of the spaces, even sacred spaces. And the women are and families. So the men also are in the court of the women. It's the whole Jewish faith is designed around everybody as much as they're able, having access to God. And that's just not how the Romans thought. So once you get into the second and third century and you have

the rise of the Gentile church, you got, as Amy said, this casting about looking at how do we organize ourselves. But also sadly, there's also the movement within the church. How do we distinguish ourselves from the Jews around us? And so, The anti-Judaism that has plagued the church for two millennia, I mean, it was evident there in the second century, but in kind of different ways. But our buddy, Justin Martyr, wrote what's called the dialogue with Trifo the Jew. This is mid-second century.

So from right out of the gate, the Christians are trying to distinguish themselves from Judaism, which is expressed primarily in their world through the synagogue. So, you know, it's... Yeah. Yeah. And there were Jewish leaders. I would say that they're Jewish female leaders in the synagogue.

We see that in Asia Minor in the inscriptions. So it wouldn't be unnatural for... In the context of these Jewish, of these Christian communities to have women who are also leading. Yeah, there... Didn't Bernard Bruton and others do work on that? There are several women called the kind of ruler of the synagogue. But isn't there a debate about whether that's a title of function or an honorary title, like a wealthy widow donated money to the synagogue, whatever,

and she's kind of honored, but she's not functioning as like a rabbi or teacher leader. So I have a story for you. This came out in 1982. And in 1984, when I was at Penn, She presented. And it was revolutionary then, that idea, because, you know, the inscriptions have been around for a while. But I honestly don't know if there really are, there's, if there is scholarship still out there saying these are honorary titles, they would be a minority. Okay.

Yeah, because the evidence has grown from what she wrote in her, this was her dissertation. I'm pretty sure. And the evidence has just grown to support her claims. So, yeah, I don't. Okay. It's just, there's just too many exceptions of, like, that would, that clearly show this is only talking about a woman. The woman owns this title, and it is functional. Teeth grinders, this one's for you.

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seafood. Okay, that's wild-alaskan.com slash t-itr for $35 off your first order. Thanks to Wild Alaskan Company for sponsoring this episode. How do we understand, and I apologize if I dart around, it's just there's fresh questions that come up that I just need to ask. So in my very limited survey of early church fathers, it's pretty easy to find some really misogynistic kind of statements. Even the statement about McCrina, Macrina, you know, it's like, you're so amazing. I need to call you a man. You know, it's like, um, uh, and even explicit statement saying women can't teach or preach. I was just reading a turtoli end of the day, not for fun. I, it was a quote from book I was

read. Anyway, nobody. Nobody. Yeah. But, but, but he was saying like, separate. I mean, a lot of stuff is still left untranslated from Latin, right? Anyway, well, so he said like, Like, you know, he bases his prohibition of women teaching and on First Corinthians 14. What I would say is a pretty clear misreading of First Corinthians 14, women be silent. But he seemed to root his prohibition of women teaching in an interpretation of Paul. Do you see other similar statements, misogynistic statements, women can't be in high levels of leadership? I mean, was that a pervasive view in the early church? I mean, they're kind of all over the place.

Like, I wouldn't say it's quite, it's not a chorus quite like that. It's all sorts of different things. Even Turtolian, like I would say, you know, that is, when you said you were going to quote Turtolian about something he said, that is not where I thought you were going to go. I thought you were going to use his quote about how women are the devil's gateway. Oh, that's a number. Yeah. So there, the early church was, I mean, you'll find, you'll find, you'll find, you'll find, you'll find,

all sorts of things that people say. I mean, there was, there's some really particularly nasty stuff. I mean, Lynn mentioned anti-Judaism earlier, but there's a ton of, there's, there's a lot of nasty stuff around, like, especially a little bit later, when you have a pretty established tradition of the church of early Christian virgins, like consecrated virginity. Like, the language that's around, like, what happens when a virgin falls, how basically, there's no way for her to be redeemed even in the waters of baptism. Like there's a, I think it's Nicetus of Ramessia, if I get his name right. I think he's in the 8th century. Like he talks about how a consecrated virgin who falls is a sanctuary of slime.

Like, I mean, so you can get some real, real good stuff in there. And I think there's, but there's this, I'm not going to redeem any of that. I don't think any of it is redeemable. And Augustine and I are going to have one. words at some point. He and I are going to have many words. He was much better. No, I mean, he and I are going to have words about some of the things he says about women and some other things too. And you know what's funny is I think that he and I have a really good relationship. Like, we're currently reading the city of God in a class of mine right now. And, you know,

I just really love him. But he and I are going to have a face to face at some point. And there will be words. There might be some tears. There are going to be some laughs. But I see, I see the same in somebody like Jerome. Jerome is a fascinating character because it was, he was kind of like an opportunist. And I think that's what I see with a lot of these early Christians. Tortolian falls in this category too, where you use rhetorical strategies in order to make a claim. And one of the ways that rhetoric works, and we still see this now. And it's a really terrible habit that I wish we would get out of.

which is using marginalized groups or stereotypes in order to denigrate people in order to take them down a notch. So using women was a very common, like, or kind of knocking a man down for being, you know, not as manly enough or something like that was extremely common. This is how they were trained. This is the schools they went in. This is the water they were in. So you see that quite a bit. What's funny is Turtolian also writes this incredible letter about his wife. And you're like, I bet he didn't call her a devil's gateway. And Jerome, his, like, he was completely surrounded by women that he relied on very heavily,

who were his, who were scholars that he relied on, who funded his ministry, who he was deeply ingrained with and who he respected. John Chrysostom is the same. He had horrible things to say about in slavery. people. But my gosh, you brought Olympias in there and he's going to, he countows to her. The same thing with Polkaria. I mean, I could go on and on. But there's this frame of in rhetorical spaces of using marginalized people. And so enslaved people, Jews, women, they wouldn't tend, they would not use poor people, which is an interesting one. But they wouldn't, we would do that now,

but they would not do that then. So it's kind of, they would do that. Locker room talk made public almost. Like, I mean, we're... I mean, no. No. I mean, it's a way to... It's not necessarily sexual. It's not necessarily about conquest.

It's about, it's about negotiation of power and how to, in an argument, in order to take someone else's argument and say, Um, this is, uh, your argument is not going to win because it's weak. So there's a, there's a sort of category of weakness, um, that they're going to like a grab bag that are going to pull from. So it's about weakness versus strength. Um, and, and, and then drawing on, you know, okay, okay, well, what makes someone strong? And this is where the Christian's gotten a lot of hot water because the gospel talks about how in our weakness we are made strong and you have a crucified Christ, which the Romans were like, what? And the idea of being resurrected into the body

that you have before, like, what? That doesn't make any sense. And so all these categories of what is weak and what is strong were being messed with. So the early Christians, you see the same person in one breath using the rhetoric that they grew up with, knocking down the weak in order to win an argument. And then like three sentences later, basically saying that those same weak people reflect Jesus. I mean, Lynn, is that your experience in reading these texts? Absolutely. Absolutely. Going back to Tertalian a little bit, he has this essay on the veiling of virgins, where he talks about 1st Corinthians 11 and 14. And at the very end, he's totally fine with women receiving prophetic word from God. It's just that he doesn't want

that woman to speak publicly in the church. She needs to. to speak privately to the leader, the male leader in that particular church. But it's not like he feels women are not connected to God and have a word to give to the congregation. He just wants to structure it according to his own views on things. I would say also to add a little bit with this, and Amy mentioned it earlier, the ascetic movement is important, during Tertullian's time, he's around 200 or so. So it's still the age of the martyrs. He's written on martyrdom.

And there's this ascetic pull. And in this veiling of virgins, he both, he recognizes that the church is praising these women for their virginity. And for women, it's from a social society standpoint, it's supposed to be harder for them because they're generally the weaker all the way around. But then he's really frustrated that these virgins are getting all these accolades. And he says, no, no, no, the men should get the accolades because it's actually harder for men to have this virginal or continent life. He just tries to have it all. And at the end, though, at the very end, it's like, yeah, and by the

way God speaks to women directly as prophet. So it's as Amy said, if I just say, like, we pick and choose these little quotes from these authors. And you can, you know, almost prove anything you want with those. You kind of have to read the whole corpus and get a sense for not only what they said, but why they said it, who they're arguing against. And the broader context like the rise of asceticism, the structure of the church and all that. That's super helpful. So if I could summarize, just so I'm on, so I'm tracking. So like, it would be, it'd be wrong to simply say the early church is just profoundly misogynistic, whatever. Like there's just so many tensions and situations and whatever. With regard to the

statements or viewpoints that are, we would, for lack of our terms, you know, misogynistic, demeaning towards women. Would you say that that is, I mean, an obvious misreading of The Bible, they're just absorbing cultural views, which were widespread at that time. Is it as simple as that? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the Aristotelian view, which sadly, I think, thrives in certain church context today, that the male is the model, the, you know, and for Aristotle, the woman is the opposite of the man.

or male, female is opposite of male, and female is the privation of male. And although you also had neoplatonic thought that's developing, that, you know, Amy knows about, I don't, but even though Plato and Aristol in certain classical senses are different in certain ways, this idea of women being by nature inferior was almost like, kind of accepted like we accept science and the fact that the earth revolves around the sun today. And so given that, that's why Gregory Vnessa has to develop a brand new, if not vocabulary, dictionary as he redefines what this language is, because they recognize, and this is what I loved in writing the book, you see the gospel making an impact, maybe not as much of an impact as maybe

I would have hoped or someone else might have hoped. But it is also, it is very much there. It is critiquing their, their culture, as it should in every culture, every generation. The fact that they, did they just not read the Bible? Because I mean, I would, I think we would all agree. And most people would say like, yeah, the Bible, especially in New Testament, kind of like, gosh, elevates women, humanizes women. I mean, strong complementarians would agree with all that. Like, ontologically, we are equal before God, you know, like, you know, are not intellectually inferior. And, you know, so how did these early church fathers, not holy, you know, but in their statements that were very misogynistic, they just didn't read the Bible? Like, they just absorb

cultural norms. And is it? Well, I don't know. Like, I mean, at what point does somebody change their mind about women in ministry, Preston? Right? Like, I mean, I don't know. I don't know. You know what I mean, yeah. So like, I mean, it's, I mean, grace for how people engage with our cultural context, the baggage that we bring in with when we come to Scripture. Like, it actually takes a while for the Holy Spirit to work through us. And the answer to did these early Christians read Scripture, they had, most of them had it memorized. Most of them had it memorized. You know, and they were engaging with Scripture. They were writing tons of commentaries. And they were. Like, I mean, They were reading through these texts and they were finding themselves just like we do in these corners that they're like, okay, these two things seem to conflict. So where do I go from here? But there's a significant amount of them negotiating around women is one space. slavery is another one, like where we have and the poor, I mean, the Romans,

like in dealing with poor people, like, I mean, they're having to overturn so much and they're doing it. Like, I mentioned Augustin earlier, and I told that we would have words, like, you know, we're having some theological debates. So he says some things about women that are really terrible. At the same time, He has a relationship with his mother that is astounding. And some of my favorite texts from him are ones that people don't tend to read.

They're actually his early dialogues where he is, this is after he has left his post, working for the government. It's before he becomes Bishop of Hippo. He's still in Italy. and he's spending some time with tutoring a bunch of young men and his mother is there as well at this estate, Kaskakum. And we have these lovely dialogues from him where he is engaging with his mom. When she comes in, just sort of walks in the room, like, hey, what are we doing? And they have this back and forth where he eventually says multiple things around the side of like,

she's like, oh, I can't have this conversation with you. I'm not philosophically trained. He's like, I'll take your philosophy over any of these guys. Like he's talking about the great books of philosophy. I'll take your philosophy over these guys any day. I will, right? And then so he has this incredible back and forth where she becomes the teacher of him and these young men at this space.

And then, of course, we have all the section in the confessions where they have this shared companionship engagement of the beatific vision. of seeing God together. And like, if access to God was hierarchical, then this wouldn't work. And this would have been a significant problem. So early, they were also, I mean, it goes all the way through ecclesiological structures

where, you know, I'm thinking about how right now we think of like, you know, all the different levels, like deacons and presbyters and stuff like that. I mean, the lifeblood of the lifeblood of the, the church was basically what we would call now lay ministry. I think one of the things we need to do is actually kind of erase our, we need to stop mapping our own structures of church back onto the early church. It really drives me crazy. And they're not, they're not even seeing authority structures in the same way we are. Okay. They understand how to push against their system. Like, I'll give an example.

Pulcaria, who's an empress, in the 5th century, who is, I mean, talk about a really difficult situation. So her father dies unexpectedly in a hunting accident. And all of a sudden, she's the oldest in the family at 12. And her brother, Theodosius II, is only seven years old, and he's now emperor. And there's a bunch of people around. It's a very volatile time. And so she is faced with the situation of how do I, There's jockeying for power.

What do I do? So she turns the palace into a monastery and has him go to Emperor Charm School for one. I'm going to put you through this. I'm going to protect you. And so she declares herself a virgin and says, yeah, I'm not going to marry. Good luck with that.

And then she becomes this massive power player. So typically, empresses were not supposed to command armies. Polcaria did. Typically empresses were not supposed to do A, B, C, D, E, and F. Polcaria did, A, B, C, D, E, and F. So there's a lot of pushing at, pressing at these seams where these hierarchical things might sound very solid to us. But they were pushing against those things constantly. And without consequence, which is really interesting.

And so that in a lot of ways, it's a cross-cultural experience for us to look at this and go, okay, well, in our world, this this wouldn't be a place where you'd be able to question authority. Right. And thinking of Polcaria here, one of the key debates that she was part of is a theological debate. That is, what do we call Mary the mother of Jesus? Is she the mother of Christ or she the mother of God? And I mean, that's hugely consequential.

And she was very much a part of the rough and tumble, the Council of Ephesus in 430. and then they had another synod after that that literally didn't a bishop die in that? The gangsta synod? Yeah.

There'd be more church historians, Amy, if you all taught on the gangsta synod. I think people would be like, wow, this is really cool. Is it called the gangster? It's called the robber synod. Yeah. Where it was stolen. Yeah.

And yeah, Bishop Flavian. from Constantinople died while being stoned while holding on to the horns of the altar because the bishop of Alexandria had brought in a bunch of monks, like monk assassin guys. I've often said that significant parts of the early church need to be an HBO miniseries. Yes, yes, it is. And Polcaria. So, Pocaria, she played a, she contributed theologically to the discussion. Yes.

Did she preside during the Council of Council? Council of Calcedon. Counselor, she presided? Well, she knew she couldn't by herself. So what did she do? She went to an old army guy and said, hey, let's get married. But we're going to have a virginal marriage. And he's like, I'm good with that.

And so Marcian and Polcaria were at the council. I don't think she actually presided over the actual council. The emperors didn't tend to do that. Marcian didn't either. But they tended to come at the end. So we have conciliar documents. Great is Marcian, and the new Constantine.

Great is Polcaria, the protectress of the empire, the new Heltena. And she held her own, because in Constantinople, there was a push to have the title of Mary be Mother of Christ, and she held it to Mother of God,

Theatokas. So that, I mean, that, yeah, so it, they made a big difference to say nothing of the laws. of late a little bit later with Theodosius, right? And his, I'm thinking of Ravenna and the beautiful mosaics there. Is that right?

Is that Justinian? Justinian, sorry, Justinian and Theodora. Yes, thank you. Justinian and Theodora and many. Who ruled as a partnership. They really did. And his Justinian laws, I think, a solid case is made that Theodora was very involved in making those laws, in part because

when she passes, hardly any additional changes or additional laws are made. I want to go back to the—you mentioned a couple of times the authority structure the church, a lot more messy and culturally bound than people often assume. So I've often understood that, you know, within the church, you have a clear authority structure, early church, like bishop, then presbyter, elders, and the deacons under them. I think you see this in the Ignatius, right? Second century, it seems like it's kind of ironed out. And all, like, that's all the authority is kind of under that. So the bishop has authority, elders or presbyters under him and deacons below them. Is that partly true, not true at all, true in some cases?

or am I missing something all together? Isn't it Ignatius that says you should treat the bishop as God? Isn't that a line from him? Something similar to that? I don't remember. Yeah, I should know this better. I didn't review it for this podcast. But I remember in his letters, which he writes on the way from Syrian Antioch to Rome to be martyred,

he does stress the importance of his role as bishop. But the way that he stresses it is, I think would feel very comfortable in kind of a more hierarchical autocratic society, as Amy mentioned, the Roman Empire was. But also you have, at this very early time, which Amy also alluded to, just a lot of other, competing voices. And so people were looking around to who do we trust. And often it was you trust the person that knew the guy who actually knew one of the apostles, right? And so there was a real concern, since there weren't that many copies of the biblical texts

or they were still just coming in into circulation, you really depended on tracing back kind of a line of authority. Well, we just don't have that situation today. We don't need that kind of really tight, what would feel, I think, to us Americans as a real authoritative straitjacket. But in the early second century, if your concern was, I really want to know if this is true,

and Ignatius can say, look, the bishops, they trace back to the apostatians, so they actually will tell you the truth, then I think, okay, I could imagine that being really comforting and reassuring. But it doesn't mean that we have to use that same language today because we have a different context. And was that even true? You said early on, second century, maybe third, as we get fourth, fifth, it sounds like there's, it gets more complicated in terms of church structure because, again, they're absorbing some norms around how the empire and politics is run.

Yeah, so I'll give me a couple examples of that complication. Like, like, especially early on, there was, as, as Lynn was talking about there, when you have around the, you have all sorts of different competing texts circulating around. So there was concern around the biblical text. And really dealing with a lot of the Gnostic teachers, the Valentinians, facilities, there were all these groups that were very shiny and charismatic. And, you know, I've had teachers in my past that have called the narcissism the way Christianity didn't go. I think there's a real, I have to kind of put ourselves in this space.

I mean, your lifespan was maybe 35. If you were a woman, you had a one and two chance every time you were pregnant of dying. There were no vaccines. There were no, I mean, the plague, famine. earthquake. I mean, this is a very volatile time. And the Christians show up going, hey, guys, the good news is that we're going to be resurrected and you're going to be you. So this body that you have now, oh yeah, never mind that you don't have hands or limbs and you're covered in leprosy, it's going to be the body you have forever. Yay! And the whole church was like, what? So the Gnostics

coming up and saying, guess what? You're going to be absorbed into the oneness and you're going to have this glorious, you're going to escape the body. And if you just pay in five easy payments, of 1995, you too can have access. And they're like, woohoo, take my money, right? So they're the first health and wealth preachers. I mean, in many ways, yes. And so, and so the early Christians were like, trying to communicate this good news was really difficult. And they need to have some sort of places where they were, where they could trust one another. So, you know, I think in a lot of times in modern Protestant spaces, we talk about like authority, like this sort of ethereal thing over here that's attached to.

a title. The early church didn't do that. They were talking about authority as as connected to persons. This person heard Jesus. And then they passed that baton to me. They laid their hands on me. I am the next in the succession. And I'm going to faithfully hold on to that baton. And then I'm to lay hands on someone else and faithfully pass that baton. So ordination was more about connection and fidelity to the gospel that you've been entrusted with as opposed to a title you aspired to or something that I went and got enough education to have or this church denomination told me I'm going to have it. That is not how they understood this. And then it gets even more complicated as we go because we talked about the martyr tradition.

Yes. So you have these martyrs that die, and their stories become incredibly constitutive for theology in the early church. They become spaces of inspiration. So you have pastors getting up there and priests and such getting up there and talking whatever. But those stories of the martyrs, we talk about Thetka in the book, there was nobody more popular than her. Nobody.

In the early church. Oh, gosh, no. There are no contest. So you have these stories that were so incredibly constitutive for the daily life and connection of Christians that were that were fought in fire, that were forged in places of difficulty and connection with Jesus. So you had those stories of people who died. But then you had a bunch of people that didn't die. They were called confessors. And it became, I actually don't know the origin of this.

Maybe Lynn, maybe you do. the idea that confessors could forgive sins, like absolve like priests could. And so there was this really interesting like, okay, so how does that work? So is it a confessor above a priest? Yeah. So they had those issues. Yeah. And those were women.

Some could be women because they were women. Yeah. And they were women. Their authority came from their testimony, not from an office that they. The connection with the gospel. Yep. Yep. Can you talk more about Thekla, maybe Lynn?

Yeah. A lot of people haven't even heard of her. Some have you even know who that is. You talk about her a lot in the book. I do. Pervasive influence in early church. Yeah, who is she? The story in the acts of Paul and Thetla is about Thetla who meets Paul.

And I think, I'm not the only person that thinks this. I think there's a group of scholars who believe they're really. was a fecla. But the acts of Paul and Thetla describe her as connecting directly with Paul and then having these adventures surviving in the arena

against wild beasts and all kinds of things. So there's some, from our perspective, kind of fantastical things. So that's not true. There wasn't a woman named Thetla hung out with Paul as far as we know. Yeah, I don't know that there,

we have no evidence from the biblical text that that's the case. And this document comes out in the second century early. So I could imagine, though, a historical fecla who was very important in the church, connecting herself to a ministry of Paul because he was so active in Asia Minor, which is where maybe this document emerges and this story emerges. And then you have a lot of other acts of various apostles that are produced. So it becomes a type of genre that is not exactly like the acts of the apostles that we have in the biblical text, but it continues with these miraculous deliverances, which we know God can do because he shut the

mouths of lions, right, with Daniel. I mean, like, so it's not, it's not like space aliens are part of Thecla's story. They're very biblical in that sense, the miracles. And she represents the movement towards asceticism, virginity, this kind of sense of Paul saying, I wish all men were as I am, you know, but some have one gift, some have another. And this idea of living in a way

that you're just totally sold out to Jesus might be a way we would. say it, you know, and so she's not going to start a family. She renounces her, the man she's engaged to, and she, you know, since she just gives up all of her wealth, I mean, she is the ideal model of what will happen down through the centuries of these wealthy believers giving up their wealth, choosing to live in monasteries, like you were mentioning with Macrina, you know, earlier, Amy.

And so Thetla, what I think is so amazing about Thetla's story is that there were countless men who thought, I want to be like Thetla. Yes. We have a story from the 6th century of a person, a man who read the story of

Thetla and thought, I want to be like her. And so he kind of made a room in his parents' home that he sealed up and became like she at the end of her life lives in a cave. People come to her for help and for healing and that sort of thing. And he decided he would live a life of kind of like an anchorite, someone who stays in one place but is dedicated to prayers. And it was because of Thetla. That, I feel like that is representative of how these martyrs and some of the empresses,

they just activated the imagination of men in ways of men thought, I could be like that. Like I admire them, especially the age of the martyrs. There was no blue discipleship and pink discipleship, you know. It was just imitatio Christi. And that, of course, carries over even after the age of the martyrs. When we move into the period post-constantine, their desire to live with death and new life, like right in front of their face.

That's how I would say the ascetic movement is, is they are just so focused on how they can be now as though they will be then when they're raised. Would that be fair, Amy, do you think? Yeah, I'd just add one small thing. You know, with the aesthetics, I mentioned earlier that, like, it sometimes seems really foreign to us, these people who are dressing in burlap and, you know, not eating meat and sleeping on the floor and doing all these things. And I say, well, we're very used to this in the athletic space. Like we sort of want to know Simone Biles' routine.

Like, how does she do what she does? And it's an ascetic endeavor. Aestheticism, eschesis means discipline or training in like an athletic sense. That's all it means. And so the early Christians understood, and the early philosophers, This wasn't just a Christian thing. Eschesis was a large way that you followed.

Your whole body came with you. So it is not body hatred. It's actually assuming that one's body is part of the process of connecting and encountering God. So the early Christians who follow in the space, and you have a lot of rich, wealthy people who did this. And the reason for this is because their culture was like, it was one giant, like, black hole. of if you go down into it,

this is going to divert you from your Christian faith. So we sort of focus a lot on the sexual renunciation piece of that. Oh, they were celibate. Oh, they were virgins. But it was just as important that they didn't eat luxurious food, that they gave alms to the poor, that they didn't wear fancy clothes, they didn't dress their hair up,

they didn't wear makeup. And I want to highlight the makeup and knock of adornment thing. I want you to hear Paul for a moment. Because the early church, and their interpretation there was, if you give so there was no hierarchical society like Rome

that was so obsessed with image I mean America might come close but in the all of those like only specific people could wear these colors only these people can wear this hairstyle only these people can eat this right

so it's attached to things it's not just like oh these people can wear Gucci because they have a lot of money you could only wear Gucci if you're this you know hierarchical you know, cast, it's like a caste system attached to materialism. And the early Christians recognize that staying in that system was fundamentally exploitative. That when you accepted those hairstyles, when you accepted those clothes, you were accepting a regime that was taking you away from the gospel. So they said, nope, we're going to be vegetarians. Nope, we're going to

not wear those fancy clothes. Nope, we're not going to wear a hair that way. Nope, we're not going adorn ourselves like that because that is is saying like it that's participating in a system that's fundamentally exploitive and so when we hear asceticism i want you to hear people that yeah they were renounced when they were renounced when they were doing like sexual renunciation it wasn't just like i'm may chase until i'm married like no it's not that at all it's not purity culture or modesty culture like we have now what it was was it's a wrench in the system because in the roman empire you had two ways to of being. You were married or you were not yet married. Or you were widowed. Or a widower. And you might be expected to get married again. But the early Christians were like, how about a third option? And the Roman

Empire is like, you're not going to have babies. You're like, we're not going to have babies. You can't do that. No, you have to have babies. No, I don't think we do. Yes, you do. And we actually have this incredible story of Melania the Younger and her husband Pinyon. And the early fifth century where she didn't want to get married, but she gets married to Pinnion. And on their wedding night, she says, hey, bro, I really just want to have a chase marriage. Can we do that?

Like, just really focus on Jesus and have a chase marriage. And he goes, I actually really need two kids. But then after that, we're good. Can we do two children? And they like negotiated out. She's like, okay, fine. So they had two children, both of whom died in infancy. And then the rest of their lives,

they lived in a continent marriage. and built monasteries everywhere and were ministry partners for the rest of their lives that way. And there's this incredible account because they were so wealthy. I mean, built, you know, all these fancy Jeff Bezos has nothing on Millennium Piny. They owned half the empire. And the empress at the time when Rome had fallen, I mean, it was just a very volatile time for Roman society. And they were going to emancipate all their slaves to get rid of wealth, not just because it wasn't largely because they thought in, enslaved people were like fully human and such. That's a whole other conversation. But because

they that was money and that was property and they were trying to like say no, no, no, no, we need to go. They need to divest ourselves of all of this. Of course, that's not true. Humans are not property. But this was their calculus. And so the empress said, no, please don't do that. You will actually throw our society into a recession if you do that. So stop it. And Millennium Pending were like, cool. Nope. We're not listening to you. and they sold their property, they emancipated all their slaves, they divested themselves of their entire thing.

So you have these wild people who were not just thumbing their nose at a system. So that hierarchy we talked about that they were in, they were also messing with it and driving it crazy in all these ways that were destabilizing the way Rome was operating. So whenever Christians have the failure of imagination, and it is a failure of imagination, oh, we just can't do anything about our culture now. I kind of want to go, really?

But are you willing to give up what it actually would take to do that? Maybe not. But these people in early Christianity certainly did. Yes. And I would just also add with all of that as the church is also getting structures. And you mentioned about embodiment. The other piece of embodiment is baptism and Eucharist for sure. But in baptism where,

You took off all of your clothes. Any, let's say, hair pins that a woman had, those were taken off to go into the waters of baptism and come back out in newness of life. And for that right in particular, you needed women deacons. Right. So this was not a jacuzzi on the stage in a big megachurch where everybody's in their bathing. suit and goes in and comes out like a very public event. This was very private. You went through a catechical process for a number of months before you were ready to do this. I'm saying all of this because sometimes people say, well, deaconess has only dealt with women. Yeah. And actually,

I don't think that is completely true because they visited the sick, men and women. But it was incredibly important for the rights of the church that women helped women be baptized and that men helped men be baptized because you wouldn't have a deaconess who did that same function with men. So I think recognizing the practices and the rights of the church that we don't have now, I mean, we're still a baptism now, but it's a very different. It's very different. And so it wasn't because the church thought, well, women can't do baptism. because the way we do baptism requires that women do it in a private space.

And men have a privacy because, you know, we have to take off all our clothes. So, okay, so that's helpful. So the reason why women didn't, women deacons didn't baptize men had really nothing to do with like the problem that, you know, a woman doing some kind of authoritative act or whatever. over, it had to do with nakedness and modesty, really. It had to do with because you were renouncing, like oftentimes you hear, like renouncing the devil, right, in like rights of baptism. They're renouncing the structures of the world. And that meant you got to take off that purple that you're wearing as part of the imperial

family. And you're standing behind an enslaved person who is also stripped. And then you are stripped because you are now part of the same family. You are now brother and sister. And so there's this moment. So there's a lot going on here. It's not entrance into the church. You're also renouncing the whole structures of the world.

So this is a deeply sacred space. And it was trusted for women to have that kind of encounter with God with other women. But yeah, I mean, it was for the sake of the fact that they were stripping completely down. And also being rubbed with the oil of the spirit. Like this was kind of a pretty moment that needed a sense of privacy. So, yeah, it was for that reason, not because of, like, only this kind of authority can do this thing. No, it is. So I've seen people reference, kind of draw a straight line between, like, well, there's female deacons, you know, in Timothy and, you know, debates about the role there is not a whole lot there.

But then female deacons in the early church, therefore women, therefore, that's an argument for, like, egalitarianism today. But I still, I, and correct me if I'm wrong, like they did not, female deacons did not exercise any kind of like, or maybe any kind. Like they didn't teach or have authority over other men in the congregation. They helped the sick. But I know, I mean, I think Doug Wilson would say like, yeah, women can go help sick people. I'm not, you know, like, you can take most patriarchar. Woody. Okay.

So like, but is that, is it safe? to say that that's not like really in argument? Like most common communitarians would be okay with the role that female deacons played in early church? Is that? Well, I think I'll just underline, first of all, what Amy was saying about, this is a very sacred moment. So it isn't a bathtub with swimsuits up on the stage kind of baptism, not to minimize

that, but we don't do rituals in the way that that was done in the sacredness. in the early years. So I would say that's one thing. We tend to then minimize the importance of deacons that way. I would say secondly that these stories of the martyred women are told on their birthdays, that is the day they were martyred, for generations through the church. And pilgrimages to important sites were told. And let's say, Thetla, there was a very large church dedicated to her in Asia Minor that bishops would travel to, I mean, men that would be there and would hear her whole the acts of Fekla read and be inspired and taught. Like, what do you mean by teaching? In the ancient church, it mattered so much what you did. It also mattered theoretically. In Polcaria, we can thank,

you know, for making sure we understand Mary as Mary. they a tokas. But the, but the practices were so important and, and the, the ritual remembrance of these martyrs and then matching our lives towards them. The imitatio Christi didn't go away with the age of the martyrs. It continued on in the, in, in the imagination of the church. So I, I guess I just get frustrated. Do you mean, you know, that they did, uh, Sunday school. They taught a mixed group Sunday school. I mean, I, I just feel like our ways of thinking about how the church was taught and what they did, just very different from what we think of today. Yeah, so they thought that when that martyr's text was read, that martyr was teaching the church.

Does that make sense? Yeah. I was thinking specifically of the role that deacons had in a church. I wasn't talking about martyrs, but that was my next question. So two questions, like the specific role and authority that deacons had in the early church was still under the higher male authority in terms of its church order structure. Would that be accurate to say? And then I want to ask a question with the martyrs. Well, the deacons, as a rule, would be under the presbyters. So male and female deacons were under.

the presbyters. But since we know there were... And male and female presbyters. Yeah. There were male and female presbyters. Then I guess there could be a male deacon who had to listen to his female presbytera, right? Yeah. I mean, the... But this was... Part of it was to do the mass or to take the, maybe the ointment and anoint the or to give alms to the poor.

There are a lot of functional things. One of the things we haven't touched on but was really important, and we see this, let's say, like in the Irish church, where we know Bridget of Ireland, she was consecrated to the order of bishop. And she was also very involved in the monastic movement, and you would have double monasteries,

a monastery where the men lived, and a monastery where the women lived. And you find in these situations, often the women were very involved in kind of the functional running of the church or the monastery in an administrative kind of role. So again, what does that mean in terms of leadership? Did she teach the male laity? I think Bridget, yes. I mean, that seems to be the stories we have of her life. She was absolutely doing that.

But it's not going to be in a Sunday school. class. Right. You know, so it's not going to be structured that home. So I want to know that, so can you, because you've already touched on it. And this is my biggest takeaway from your book, opened up whole new categories. And I'm trying to word it. And again, I don't, I don't want to read everything to the modern debate about what would have been ministry. It's just fresh on my head. And I'm getting asked questions every day. What about this? What about that? So I want to have you unpack the relationship between, for lack of better terms, the authority of, say, the bishop and the theological role that martyrs played.

Like, because if somebody has a really kind of flat modern view, they would say, okay, martyrs, yeah, they're influential, they're great, lived a great life, they're examples of follow up, but they're still under the authority of a male bishop. As I'm reading your book, you're like, those categories are just not, those are modern rejected upon, like the bishop probably wouldn't have said that at all. So I want to say at the outset, like I know that you're getting a lot of questions. Like I understand it. And I want to validate the fact that people really want to read scripture well.

Right. And they want to learn about the history. They want to know about the church. They want to be as faithful as they can. And I want to just validate that. So when people come to me with questions about this, like I never want to kind of minimize that. Well, you don't know anything about history. Like, you know, I don't want to do that. So there is, I, I just want to say that that's a, those, those are good questions and I'm glad

people are asking them. But in asking something, it's a little bit like, I kind of mentioned earlier, it's a cross-cultural experience. When we ask questions, I would encourage us to recognize that maybe the answer we receive is, might take a little bit of time to process. It might take some change on our part, some changes in our assumptions, some addressing of our biases in order to hear the early church well. And I think that that bit can be, that's where the fuzzy difficulty can be where like in that distinction I was making with like authority in title versus authority and fidelity scripture, like that might, somebody might still be like, oh, I don't know what, like, what was she getting at there? Like, and I totally get that.

So I just want to encourage people with your questions to kind of to sit with this a while. Like you're trying to learn a new language. Like the past is a different country. They do things differently there. And like you're not going to show up in Germany with your like Google Translate and just be able to be fluent in German. That's just not how it works. As much as I would like that. And the same is true with going into any context that is different.

And by the way, I quoted a historian there, which I do not remember his story. his name with the past is a different country. So citation note there, but I can't remember his name. So sorry. But that wasn't me. So don't quote me on that. But I think I want to validate the question, but at the same time, recognize that this is not, these are not easy answers. And it's not because there's nothing there. There's no there there there or because we have to pad around things. It's literally because it's so different. It's just such a different space. And there's actually some work we need to do in order to understand what is happening. We're talking about one of the most volatile complex times in the history of humanity with cultures clashing with one another. You've got

North Africa, you got Asia Minor, you got Palestine, you got Rome, you've got the Goths, you've got, I mean, it's just a wild time with people crashing into each other. Things are moving fast. Things are changing. You have cultural differences. You have things that are popular in Asia Minor that are not popular in Rome. You've got stuff happening in North Africa that is not popular over in Palestine. So there's a lot of regional change and stuff. So we're trying to give, if nothing else, I hope people hear this is a complicated and rich place. I want you to, I want people to engage in.

I want people to sink their teeth in it and like settle in because it's going to be a ride. You know, and I would say like an example, how would you know about the early, a local, church, would you just read their annual business meeting minutes? Would you read the minutes of the elder board? Or would you visit for a couple of months and get a sense the culture of the church isn't going to be fully expressed in the perhaps volatile cantankerous or disengaged annual business meeting? If that's all you read were the minutes from that, which is sometimes what happens when people say, well, I want to read a church order. And so they have, you know, just on and on and on from this committee and that committee. But when you look at the artwork,

or you look at the letters, where you look at the practices like pilgrimages to relic sites, you recognize that women and men are together really thinking deeply about how to be more faithful. And I know this sounds, I don't know, I'm trying not to make it sound trite, but rather to really say there's a lot of sincere effort towards being just really faithful. And one of the things that Amy and I try and look at is the artwork, like in the catacombs and elsewhere. And we've got this box, it's a, it's an ivory box that was found recently, but was done about 4.30 or so, A.D. And it shows the old St. Peter's, you know, that St. Peter's altar has the twisty kind of columns. And that's a technical art term. Twisty kind of columns.

But on this, in this ivory box, we have that. And on one side is a man and on the other side is a woman most likely at an altar doing communion. And I just, I love that picture. I feel like that that is a legitimate representation of what many, that represents, I think, I hope many, but at least some in the early church. That was their experience of men and women doing church together in that kind of way. We have enough evidence that that happened in each generation at different places. And I think that's what Amy and my book is trying to draw out.

And to see that these, they were just together. And it was just, it was incredible how much connection there was. I really appreciate looking at sort of family units or networks. You know, I work primarily with the Cappadocians. So that's Gregory of Nissa, Basil of Cessaria, and Gregor of Nazianzus. And they come from both sides of the family. Basil Cessaria and Greg of Nessau were brothers, Basil being the older. And Greg of Nazianzis was like their college buddy.

And but their family had martyrs on either side. Karina was named after her grandmother, who had been a martyr. And when she was born, her mother gave her the name, the secret name, Thakla. Meaning, it was kind of like a name that she lived into. And Gregory tells us this. And Gregory Nazianzus, who in the Eastern tradition is named Gregory the theologian. There are only a few of those in the history of the tradition. And we think, well, that's a strange last name.

It's actually, it's like an honorific title of like, this person's theologian. has a specific space in the Christian tradition. So Gregory, the theologian, spends an inordinate amount of time at one of those Thetla shrines, Lynn was talking about. He is there. He's writing poetry. He's spending time in her space. Thecla was a companion for the Capodotosians.

And then with Macarena, like, you know, I mentioned, I mentioned his language with her earlier. I mean, he weeps over her. He connects with her. he asks her questions. He is, he, and, and when she dies, it's this astounding scene. The entire community shows up at their house because she'd housed their orphans. She'd fed them when they were, during the famine. She'd been, their house had been a, like I say house.

It was an estate. Their estate had been a community center during earthquakes. They had fed people. They'd housed people. They'd raised children of people that had died. And the whole community came out and they were singing so. loudly that Gregory had to bring some order and they all marched

to her like shrine. I mean it's just the so I want you to hear like in that space just the kind of space these women took up and you don't see that unless because a lot of times in seminaries we read the early church's theological

documents and very specific narrow version of them and think the other stuff is like interesting but not necessary and so we have a very dude-centric understanding of early Christianity, I guess, is the only way to put it. And McRena, would it be accurate to describe her as like a primary discipler of her two Gregory brothers?

And not just how to follow Jesus, how to pray, but like a theological, like she, they look to her as a theological authority in their life? I mean, is that? Yeah, and not just two of them, all the four that we know of. Oh, the college buddy as well. Well, Gregor, Basil Cessoriah, who she, she corrects at one point. Like she basically says that he's,

that he's too full of himself and knocks him down a couple pegs, which I find really kind of amazing. Gregory of Nessa, who she was, I wouldn't say she was closest to him, but she lived, and then Peter of Sabasi, who was also a bishop,

and now Cratius, who was there, another younger brother who was a hermit that kind of lived off close by, but also died young. So she basically, after her father died, her mother went into a pretty intense

state of grief. And she ended up becoming basically the head of the household. And she, Gregory, only Basil went off to school. Gregory did not. None of the rest of them did. They were all schooled by Macarena. Oh my gosh. Well, I think that's a good place to end. I'm taking you over. Oh, my word. Okay. So if this is what anybody's appetite, got to check out the book, Christian women in the partition world. Their influenced authority legacy in the second through fifth centuries. You've gotten a taste on this conversation of all the kinds of things that you guys talk about in your book. It's so, so helpful. Love the conversation. And I really appreciate your scholarly of the work. And yeah, thanks for helping me out and thinking through all these

important questions. Thanks for including us in the conversation, Preston. Thanks for having us, Preston. It's great.