Theology in the Raw - From Genesis to Junia: Responding to Critiques, Pt. 2

Episode Date: June 11, 2026

Join my Patreon community to listen my Extra Innings where I respond to egalitarian critiques from Dr. Beth Allison Barr and more! Preston's book From Genesis to Junia: An Honest Search for What the Bible Really Says about Women in Leadership has been out for 3 months and has received many positive reviews--but also some critical ones. In this episode, Preston responds to some of the critiques he's received, focusing largely on John Whittaker's critical response. Preston has responded to John's review on his blog.Learn more about the NLT hereRead John Whittakers Blog hereRead Preston's Response hereSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology and Ra. This episode is part two of my responses to reviews of my book from Genesis to Junia. In this episode, I'll continue responding to some critiques from a complementarian perspective. And then in the extra innings portions of this episode, I'll respond to some critiques from an egalitarian perspective. If you'd like to listen to this extra innings portion of this episode, head over to patreon.com forward slash Theology and Ra and become a member of the theology in the raw community. Again, that's patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw. And yeah, you'll gain access to this extra innings portion of the episode and all the other extra innings episodes in past episodes.

Okay, let's jump in. John Whitaker is an awesome guy. He's a good friend of mine, lives here in Boise. In fact, when I planted the Extension campus for Eternity Bible College here in Boise, Idaho. That's what brought me to Boise, Idaho, to plant an extension campus for Eternia Bible College. And part of my job was finding teachers, a teacher of the Bible College. And John Whitaker was like my number one pick. Everybody raves about John. He's kind of a legendary teacher here, former professor of Bible at Boise Bible College. And is an amazing guy. We're very thoughtful, great teacher. And he got asked to write a review of my book.

And this is awesome John is. He came to me before and says, hey, man, I got to ask to write a review of your book. I'm, you know, it might be somewhat critical. I just, you don't want to make sure, are you okay with that, whatever? I'm like, dude, of course. And he's like, I thought you'd say that.

Like, so really enjoyed reading through John's really thorough review. It is really thorough. And I would highly recommend you read it. it's over at renew.org, renew.org. And, yeah, John's review was just, I think it was worded very well. It was very thoughtful. He thoroughly read the book, read it in good faith, and offered some really some good pushback. I mean, I'm going to respond and not agree with most of the pushback or, you know, explain why.

I'm not persuaded to change my viewpoint. There's some things, though, that I think he raised some points that I definitely has caused me to go back and say, maybe I could have worded that differently and clarify some things. And then other points that he raised that are just worthy for further consideration. So I would highly recommend you go and check out John's review. I did write a lengthy written response to John's review titled A Response to John Whitaker's Critical Review of from Genesis of Junia,

which is a blog post over at TheologyinTheRod.com. So if you want to follow along with how I'm going to respond to John here and you do better like reading than listening or you want both, you can go over and check out that response. So I'm going to go point by point here and respond to some of his critiques in my book. I'm going to pass all. He begins, as any good reviewer should do,

and lists the things you agree with. List the positive things in a book. Unless you're reading, reviewing mind comp or something, like, you know, or the Satanic Bible. Hopefully you should have something. You kind of say, hey, this was helpful. Or I agree with this.

And so John does that. I'm going to skip over that just for the sake of time, but just know that he did list several things that he found very, very helpful and things he agreed with in the book. In terms of critique, the first thing he critiques is my, is when I define leadership as service. So one of the central claims I make in the book is that Jesus' revolutionary teaching about authority and greatness in God's kingdom deeply shapes both Jesus' view of leadership and

Paul's view of leadership. So like in, you know, in a world where rulers exercise authority and lorted over others, Jesus says, it shall not be this way among you. Mark, chapter 10, verses 42 to 45. Instead, the one who is great in the kingdom is the one who is a servant. Now, I don't draw a simplistic, like, straight line from this passage and argue, you know, therefore women can be leaders in the church. This isn't my argument. My point is more modest and more precise. In the one passage where Jesus speaks most directly about leadership, he identifies service as one of its defining characteristics. I'm careful in the book to say that servant language is not simply synonymous with leader. They are not interchangeable terms, but service does emerge as a central

trade of leadership in early Christianity. So that's the gist of my argument. I'll come back to that in a second. So John worries that my language here, quote, muddies the waters and into discussion about women and leadership. He says, quote, the very question being debated is about definite leadership positions. If titles and ordination don't matter, why are we even discussing the subject? The overarching question he pursues in his book, we've heard to me, is whether women can occupy certain specific leadership or certain specific ministry positions that have titles, for example, elder, overseer, deacon, et cetera, and often require some kind of ordination, end quote. So I don't think John here has quite grasped my argument at this point, or perhaps I could have

been clearer. I actually don't think the debate should be reduced to leadership positions or ministry titles that require ordination. In chapter four of my book, one of my goals is precisely to broaden our criteria of what counted as leadership in the context of the first century church, specifically first century house churches. And then I end chapter four of my book with a section titled Revisiting Leadership in the First Century House Churches in First Century House Churches where I suggest that we need to ask better questions. Here's what I say at the end of that chapter. It would be wrong to limit

our quest to the question, are women described as elders, overseers, or pastor teachers? This is a good question to include in our search, but it's not the only one. Instead, we should ask, are women described with explicit leadership terminology associated with other terms and phrases that might signify leadership or identified in a way that would have been understood as leadership, according to the first century context of early Christians who met in homes? Unquote. And so that's kind of the key point in terms of how I approach the question. Leadership in the early church can't be reduced to titles alone.

And it's far from obvious, I think, that our modern notion of ordination maps neatly onto the New Testament world. John also critiques me for blurring the distinction between leadership and service. He says this, Sprinkle seems to imply that since servanthood is at the heart of Jesus' vision of leadership, then all servants are leaders. I know he doesn't think this is the case, but he makes a handful of statements throughout the book that suggests if you find a servant, you found a leader. But this is an erroneous understanding of Jesus's words. The point of Jesus's teaching is not that the janitor is the one

who actually leads the company. His point is that the leader of the company should have the heart that would make him a good janitor. In other words, not every servant is a leader, but every leader must be a servant. End quote. I think this is a good pushback. In fact, I almost made the exact point in early drafts of my book where I said something like, you know, just because a leader as a servant doesn't mean every servant as a leader. And actually, I thought I had John here. I was like, dude, I said exactly what you said. I should have said. And I went back to find the statement in the book. And I was like, dang it. It got cut from the final manuscript. Now I kind of wish I would have kept it in. And as some of you know, I've talked about this.

you know, the book, in the editing process, I had to whittle the manuscript down from like 500 pages to 300 pages, just because I didn't want it to be a massive tome. I wanted to be somewhat concise. I mean, 300 pages. Is that concise? And I wanted to be more accessible. There's many beefy academic books out there. I didn't want mine to just be this massive tomb that a lot of people wouldn't take the time to wait.

through. So anyway, in my effort to make it more concise, I must have cut out this clarification that John has rightfully pointed out. So let me clarify what I was trying to say. I fully agree with John that not everyone who serves is therefore a leader. But I do think the New Testament's view of leadership goes beyond simply saying that, you know, a Christian leader should have a servant's heart. So here are several observations that I make in my book and kind of summary form. Okay. So first one is in the one place where Jesus comes closest to defining leadership, Mark 10, 42 to 45 in the parallels, Jesus identifies service as a key leadership trait.

Okay, so I'm just trying to make an observation. I think that's indisputable that this passage is the closest Jesus comes to directly addressing what leadership is, and service is a key leadership trait. Also, in the Gospels, the only people who explicitly model this trade apart from Jesus are women. I point this out in my book. Mark 131 is where Peter's mother-in-law serves Jesus.

And then in Mark 1541, you have the Galilean women who follow Jesus and served him. It's the only two times when the verb Diaka-Neo service to serve, which Jesus says is a key leadership trait. Only time this key leadership trait is applied to people. outside of, you know, Jesus applying it to himself, is these two passages, bookending the gospel, applying to women. And I'm not, even there, I'm not saying, therefore, case closed, women can be leaders. It's just like, these are things to note as we're trying to get our, trying to build a cumulative case for our view of women in leadership.

Also, Jesus is teaching on leadership significantly shapes Paul's own understanding of Christian leadership. Paul often uses servant language to describe leaders. And a classic case is First Corinthians one to five, where Paul, it's, I mean, First Corinthians one to five is almost like an extended reflection on Mark 10, where Paul is contrasting Christian leadership with secular leadership. In fact, Dr. Andrew Clark, who's a specialist in ancient Christian leadership, I think he, I think this is a PhD dissertation. It's called like, it's titled something like secular and Christian leadership, First Corinthians 1 to 5 or something. So he makes a really strong case for this. Also, another thing to note, every named person Paul calls a servant is also a leader in the church.

Apollos, 1st, 3.5, Timothy, 1st, Timothy 4, 4, 6, 5, Apophis, Colossians 1,000, and Ephesians 621. We could also add Jesus, who's called a servant, and Paul himself, where we refer to to himself as a servant seven times with reference to his apostolic ministry. And of course, we can add one more person who is also named, another named person who is called a servant of the church. And that would be Phoebe in Romans 16.1. If Phoebe is not a leader, then she's the only time a named person is called a servant in Paul's ministry. The first time a non-leader is called a servant in Paul's ministry. Did I say that?

I can't remember. Again, I'm not presenting these observations as some airtight proof that women are therefore church leaders. Rather, they contribute to a larger cumulative case, a picture that is more suggestive, not independently decisive, but increasingly compelling when taken together with everything else I argue in the book. So hopefully that clarifies how I view the relationship between leadership and service. Another critique John offers that he says, women filled some leadership roles, but not every leadership role. So he critiques me for making an illogical move that if women filled some leadership roles, then they must fill every leadership role. As he puts it, his Sprinkles reasoning seems to be that if we find women acting as leaders,

then this proves egalitarianism. But he says, John says, this conclusion doesn't follow. He says leadership in one position or five positions does not necessarily. leadership in every position. So let me respond to this. And it's kind of related to some of the things I've already said. In my book, I argue that the New Testament does not present a neat hierarchy of church leadership where you have like a senior pastor, a bishop who occupies the top tier,

followed by elders below them, and then deacons beneath them. I mean, this sort of hierarchical structure becomes visible in second century, most famously in the writings of Ignatius. But the New Testament itself presents a much more varied and fluid picture of leadership. It uses a wide range of leadership terminology, and that terminology doesn't line up neatly with the institutional structures that many of us have today in our churches. And so with specifically with overseer and elder, it's interesting that these terms, overseer and elder only occur in three of Paul's 13 letters. They occur in 1st Timothy, Titus and Philippians.

Overseer occurs in Philippians. Elder only occurs in 1st Timothy and Titus in Paul's letters. And yet Paul regularly refers to leaders of other churches with different terms and phrases that are describing people functioning in ways similar as overseers and elders. In fact, I would say, and I point this out in my book, and others have argued this, that somebody, Paul can refer to the work of an elder or overseer without using those terms. In fact, elder is just a very common Jewish way of describing an honorable, prominent, older person in a community.

You know, we see elders, we see Jewish elders throughout Acts. We see Christian elders. and this is, it's more of an honorable title, not like a, not some kind of office. Overseer might be an office. In fact, some people say, you know, elders is just an honorable way of referring to older people. And overseer is kind of the function or role that they carry in the church. All that to say, like, yeah, Paul refers to leaders with many other categories, but he's referring to the same kinds of people. maybe even the same people that he would, in other places,

call elders or overseers. For example, one of Paul's most frequently used leadership terms is proistami to lead or manage or care for. And he uses it describe, he uses proestamie to describe the leadership of overseers in 1st Timothy 3.5 and elders in 1 Timothy 517. And then he also uses this term in elsewhere in gender inclusive contexts like Romans 128. 1st Thessalonians 512, and I would also add 1 Timothy 312 in reference to deacens. The noun prostatist, prostasis, that's hard word to say, is, it's related to proestemi.

It's like a noun form of the word. And he uses prostasis to refer to Phoebe in Romans 162. refers to the same point. It's a term that conveys some kind of leadership. So all that is to say, like, if women were pro esteemine, leading, managing, caring for the church, this would be one way to identify leaders. But it's not like you have elder in a separate category over here. And most people say like elder overseer or synonyms.

Okay, let's just, that's not, that might be true. Not everybody agrees with that. but let's just assume that to be a case. So elder overseer over here and then you have people who proistamie over here. It's like, well, no, these terms can overlap and they're fluid and they can describe the work or function of the same kinds of people. The same goes for heads of households who hosted gatherings in her home, which includes several women. I talked about this, Lydia, Nympha, Mary, and others. In the first entry context, household hosts,

likely functioned as overseers of the gathering that met in their homes. And many scholars of the first century have pointed this out. This is not at all unique to do my book. Heads of households who hosted church gatherings would be overseeing the gathering, even if we don't find the specific term episcopas overseer in all of those contexts. So all that to say, leadership in first century house churches cannot be neatly compartmentalize into certain roles that are completely distinct from other roles. And various terms are used to describe various leadership roles that often functionally overlap.

So, yeah, my simple point is, you know, once the premise of my argument is understood, the conclusion John attributes to me, I don't think, follows in the simplistic way he suggests. So my reason it is not, you know, women held some roles, therefore they held all roles. Rather, my point is, leadership categories in the first century House Church are much more fluid, overlapping, and diverse than what we have today. So I have gotten into marathon running at 50 years old. It's crazy. I know. Probably not the smartest thing, but here we are. Now, I've learned that, you know, your diet and nutrition are obviously super important for training, but the one thing I didn't realize was the importance of fiber in your diet. Think about it this way. If your gut is functioning better, then everything else you're doing, diet, your workouts, your recovery, it all becomes much more effective. That's why I'm thrilled

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Start building brain health into your every day with Mosh bars. Thanks to Mosh for sponsoring this episode. John also critiques me for making what he sees as inconsistent claims about women's social influence in the first century world. So John writes, when making a point about how the original Greco-Roman readers would have heard the narratives in the Gospels about the faithfulness of the women disciples in contrast to the faithlessness of male disciples, Sprinkle describes the culture of those original readers

as, quote, male-dominated, where women were considered less significant, less moral, less wise, and less virtuous than men. But when arguing that in a first century house church, the women of the household would have been a de facto leader in the church, he argues that women in Greco-Roman culture had leadership roles in civic, religious, and even political spheres,

and contends that they often wielded more power an authority over the management of the household than their husbands. Unquote. So I'm so glad John raised this point. If it felt inconsistent to him, it certainly may have felt inconsistent to other readers as well. And in reading how John pointed out two quotes from different chapters of my book, I can totally see why these would seem contradictory. So let me, I don't think there are. So let me clarify. So women did live. in a world largely dominated by men in the first century. That much is true, but this, but there were several and real exceptions to the rule.

I mean, for instance, two thirds of property was owned by men in the first century. So there's an imbalance there, but that means a third of the property was owned by women. So that's like, that's pretty significant. And yet in general, yeah, women held political and civic leadership positions. Men were the legal authority over the home. They own the property. Functionally, women did a lot more managing and had a lot more authority on the ground than what we often assume. So it's, yeah, it can be complicated.

And things get even more complex when we turn to the household. So the main area that John highlights. On the one hand, Greco-Roman male writers like Aristotle and Didomus, they sort of idealized the male role in the home and grounded that ideal and a broader vision of social hierarchy. So when male writers are writing about how the home should be run, yes, it sounds so hierarchical. On the other hand, lived reality is often messier than the literature sometimes suggests. So I mentioned this in chapter 7 where I say that ancient male writers, quote, saw husbands as superior rulers and everyone else, including wives as inferior people to be ruled.

Life on the ground, however, was more complicated. As we saw in chapter 4, wives often held more authority and influence than what sometimes conveyed in the literature. But one thing is clear. The literary trope of the household code propped up the husband as the supreme ruler in the house, even if these codes were more prescriptive and not descriptive of real life. So, yeah, so there is a tension between the sort of idealize. This is a way things should be run.

And then when you broaden your understanding of the history of the first century, you can see that, oh, it's a little messier than this. And women had more influence and authority than what the literature might sometimes. convey. You also have, this is something that I didn't tease out in my book. Well, I did a little bit. I think it's one of those things like I touched on it, but it could have been developed much more thoroughly that, well, when it comes down to the private versus public sphere, and this is something, yeah, a lot of people have written on that in the public sphere, men typically were the visible rulers and authority figures.

But in the more private sphere, like the home, women held a lot more authority and leadership. So it's not just the idealized picture versus what actually happened on the ground. There's also a distinction between the public and private sphere. And so since church has met in homes, and that, That was more of a female domain. Actually, I did talk about this in chapter four of my book. You know, it would be expected that women would have more leadership in the more private sphere. And several scholars have pointed out that when the church became much more of a public institution in the third and four centuries, this is when this is when we see.

male leaders really dominating the church, whereas early on, it's a little more messy. I'm not an expert in this in early church history, but I have been doing quite a bit of reading on it, and I'm seeing that like the role that women played in the church is more messy than I thought it was, even in the early parts of church history. So, okay, so all that to say, I, yeah, I was trying to navigate some of these complex. when I talked about women, you know, when I talked about like a male-dominated society over here, then other places where it's like, well, there's exceptions to this. And women did have some authority and leadership and other spheres of society.

So my point was not to say one thing when it helped my case and another one it didn't. I hopefully didn't come off that way. My point was to reflect the complexity of the world that we're dealing with, the first century Greek Roman world. Okay. So John also critiques me for my framing of women in Jesus' meaning. ministry. So he summarizes my argument this way, that, you know, women are portrayed as faithful,

while the men, especially the apostles, are faithless. Or again, the gospel writers contrast women's faithfulness with the faithfulness of the 12. And he thinks I overstate my case. And in response, he points to the faithfulness of Joseph and Matthew 1, the initial obedience of Peter, Andrew, James, and John, and leaving their nets to all the Jesus and to Jesus' common commendation of Peter's confession. So John writes,

although women played influential roles and were often excellent models of discipleship, that did not promote them to every position of leadership, nor does it disqualify the men from their appointed position of leadership. And okay, so this, I think this is fair, fair criticism.

And in retrospect, I should have acknowledged, or at least, even if like in a footnote, you know, that the apostles are not portrayed negatively in every respect. They do display some positive traits that some points and some gospels. So I think my summary on page 84, my book, which, you know, where I said gospel writers, contrast women's faithfulness with the faithlessness of the 12.

Like I didn't intend that to be like absolute. Like all women are always faithful. All men are always faithless. But that's my summary did kind of sound absolute. and, you know, I should have at least had a footnote maybe saying I'm not trying to make an absolute statement here more of a general one. So regarding John's examples, Whitaker, not the Apostle John, I guess I want to point out that, you know, Joseph, in my chapter I was talking about female disciples in contrast to the 12 apostles. and so John, you know, points to the faithfulness of Joseph. Well, Joseph isn't part of the 12th, so that wasn't really part of my point.

Peter, you know, did Jesus praise Peter's confession? Well, I guess for a second. But then Peter received an immediate and scathing rebuke by Jesus afterwards. And then Peter ended up denying Jesus during his last days while women were the one who stood by him at the cross. James and John certainly left their nets to follow Jesus initially, but we're later rebuked by Jesus on multiple occasions for their secular desire for power. And Mark's gospel in particular is pretty ruthless in its negative evaluation of the 12 while highlighting the faithfulness of women in contrast. The 12 often lack faith.

I've got references here in my blog. You can look up. I don't want to read them all. They often lacked faith, doubted Jesus' supernatural abilities, misunderstood his messianic vocation, failed to understand his words, were unable to cast out demons, deserted him in his greatest hour of need, and in the case of Peter, deny that they knew him. So in short, I shouldn't have given the impression that the gospel's paint an absolutely negative portrait of 12's failures and contrast to the faithfulness of women. It's not absolute, but it is almost absolute. It's shocking. It really is in the first century for the 12 male apostles to be depicted as negatively as they are, again, not in every respect, but in many respects, and have several women on a

literary level, you know, being portrayed as modeling the kind of faithfulness that Jesus demands from his 12 apostles, but is not finding in them, generally speaking. And yet, women are embodying the very virtues that Jesus wants from the 12. And I didn't, again, I didn't draw a straight line. From that point to like, they're for women, women should be leaders, you know, but just to kind of get our arms around, get our minds around and our hearts in tune with the sort of rhythm in which the New Testament is shaking up expectations of men and women in Jesus' ministry. Okay, so John also pushes back on my treatment of the argument that Jesus' selection of the 12 male apostles points to male leadership in the church.

So in the book, I question the reasoning behind this argument. So, you know, the argument that Jesus chose 12 male apostles, and this suggests only men can be leaders in the church on some level, maybe certain, maybe the highest level of leadership or whatever. There's different ways of framing it. So as I put it in the book, you know, the 12 apostles represent a read. constituted 12 tribes of Israel. Since the 12 tribes derive from 12 male patriarchs, the sons of Jacob, the 12 apostles had to be male for the symbolism to work. And so I question whether Jesus's rationale for choosing 12 men was intended to establish a principle of male-only leadership for the future church. And John disagrees with this. He says that the sex of the 12 is indeed relevant

for the question of male leadership in the church since these men are described as foundational for the church. And he's, you know, yeah, he's right about this. The apostles are foundational to the church. It's interesting that prophets are also mentioned alongside apostles as playing a foundational role. Paul on several occasions talks about prophets and apostles being the foundation of the church in Ephesians 212,

Ephesians 3-5. and we know women were prophets. So I wouldn't say the fact that apostles were foundational for the church and therefore leaders of the church would be an argument to exclude women because prophets are correlated with apostles as foundational for the church and women were also prophets. Junia, as I argue, was also an apostle. I mean, obviously not one of the 12, but I mean, neither was Paul.

Neither was Apollus. One of the 12, but they're still apostles. Paul and other non-12 apostles seem to have exercised the same kind of authority that the 12 did. So, yeah, and again, this is kind of just repeating what I said in the book. And so this, it might, I don't know, might have just been an agree-to-disagree issue, but I point out in the book that if the 12 apostles are meant to signify what church leadership should look like, including being male, then why do the 12 so often,

not always, fail to embody the leadership traits expected of leaders, while women often embody such traits? John does address this point. I didn't find his response to that convincing, but maybe you will. So I don't know. Yeah, I just, I don't know. I find it questionable that Jesus' rationale

for choosing 12 male apostles was intended to make a statement about the required sex of future leaders. Again, maybe you're like, no, it seems clear to me. It doesn't seem clear to me. So this is one of those that the strength of the arguments lie in the eyes of the beholders. Is that how it goes? Something like that. Anyway.

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anniversary, listeners to the show can go to Tindale.com and use the code raw 30 to get 30% off any NLT Bible. Again, that's Tindale.com and use the code raw 30 to get 30% off any NLT Bible. Hey friends, if you missed the recent Exiles in Babylon conference or you just wanted to watch it again, the entire conference, including all the breakouts, are now available on demand. Just head over to TheologyNrod.com to check it out. We had some amazing conversations and talks about AI, immigration, mental health, and a couple different dialogical debates on the historical reliability of the Bible and another one on Christians and War. The speakers include Sandy Richard Piedens, Shane Claiborne, Paul Copeland, Dan Allender, Chinway Williams, Rick Heels,

and many others. My favorite part of the conference, I mean, it had to be all the dialogues and Q&A portions of each session where speakers had to go off script and address some challenging questions in the moment. These raw conversations are always the best. Again, when I get access to the conference, check it out theology in the raw.com. Let's talk about Phoebe Priscilla and Junia in Romans 16. So I devote an entire chapter of the book to Phoebe Priscilla and Junia. My aim here is to examine the language Paul uses for each woman. And to argue that taken together, the evidence forms a cumulative case that all three served as leaders in the church.

And my phrase cumulative case is really important. I'm not building the argument on one contested word or one speculative reconstruction. It's like if Phoebe was simply a letter carrier, this by itself wouldn't mean, therefore she's a leader. If Priscilla was simply called a coworker that might be suggested but not conclusive. that she was a leader. So as I write in the conclusion of that chapter, if all we had were one or two debated words, I would be much more hesitant to draw a conclusion

about these women occupying leadership roles, but the cumulative case seems overwhelming. Now, I'm going to jump into some of John's critiques, but I just want to point out that John doesn't evaluate and overturn my cumulative case for the claims made in this chapter. And this is understandable, you know, I mean, such a comprehensive counter argument would double the length of his length of his already long review.

My only concern is that someone might read his review and not read my chapter and think that he's overturned what is a multi-faceted argument in my book. So with that said, let me respond to some of his critiques regarding Priscilla. John writes, it's true that Priscilla is called Paul's co-worker in ministry and she and Aquila hosted churches in their home, but to refer to her as an early church leader, as I do, and by that to mean that she occupied the same role as a male elder as inaccurate and unpersuasive.

I think there's several problems with this criticism. I'll mention a couple. First of all, as again, as I argue in chapter four, the hosts of house churches likely function as the de facto overseers or elders of those gatherings. Don, I guess, I think he would disagree with that, but he doesn't offer a counterargument to that claim. And secondly, I don't think he really grappled with the significance of the term co-worker as Paul uses it. as I note in the book, Paul uses the term co-workers to Nergas 12 times to describe 16 different people, three of whom are women, including Priscilla.

Almost all the people Paul identifies as co-workers were clearly leaders in the church. It's page 136 in my book. And I unpacked this claim in an extended footnote. I think this footnote should have been part of the body of my book because some people don't read footnotes. Probably many people don't read footnotes. But this footnote was pretty important. It just seemed like it was so much information. So I put it in a footnote rather than in the body of the text.

But I basically give all the evidence for my claim that coworker described 16 different people, almost all of whom are leaders. So let me just read this quote for you. Co-workers who are clearly leaders include Luke, Mark, Timothy, Titus, and Philemon. I think complementarians would be happy. be to add Aquila to this list, Priscilla's husband. Aristarchus in Philippinez 24 should probably be added to the list. He was a traveling minister with Paul, according to Acts 1920 and 27. And the two were together in prison. Paul's description of Apaphroditis in Philippine's two is glowing.

Paul calls him my brother, my coworker, my fellow soldier, your messenger, apostolos, and servant, who should be considered highly honored since he risked his life for the work of Christ. The cumulative weight of all these terms and phrases would suggest that he too is a leader. We know less about Demis, who's called a co-worker in Philemon 24, who's mentioned in passing in Colossians 414

and ended up leaving the faith toward the end of Paul's ministry, 2nd 4-10. We also know a little about Clement in Philippine's 4-3, who's only mentioned once, even though early church fathers identified him as Clement of Rome, the third bishop of the Roman church. There's no biblical evidence for this. He was a coworker with Paul who contended at Paul's side along with Yodia and Sintake, Flippians 2, or sorry,

Flippins 4. And we know the least about justice, Colossians 411, who simply called a co-worker. So again, not every, we can't say definitively that every coworker is a leader because we just don't have enough evidence, but when we can corroborate people who are called a coworker with other descriptions of who they are, they are leaders. So all that to say, you know, Priscilla and Aquila are not simply co-workers. They host multiple house churches. They instruct Apollos in the way of God more accurately. And notably, Priscilla is often named first, right? Of the six times, they're mentioned together. Priscilla is named first four of the six times.

which there's debates about what that means, but the very least, we can't say Priscilla was simply like a pastor's wife and Aquila was the pastor leader. They're always mentioned together. They're always doing the same thing. And if anything, Priscilla had a more prominent role. But again, we want to be careful reading into why she's named first.

So taking cumulatively, the evidence strongly suggests that Priscilla and Aquila functioned as leaders in the church. And I also see no evidence that Paul was intent on assuring his readers that Priscilla exercise such ministry only under some explicitly male exclusive chain of authority. Yeah, let's see. There's a lot more to say about when John says, when John says to refer to Priscilla as an early church leader, and suggest that she had the same role as a male elder.

Again, I think, I just think we need to really unpack the relationship between leadership terminology in the New Testament. I don't see Elder as this distinct category separate from other words and phrases describing the role and work of leaders. There's a fantastic book by Alistair Campbell called The Elders. It's the definitive scholarly work on elders. And he's the one who says, and he's not the only one to say it, but he argues pretty persuasively that, you know, elder is just, it's a,

that was a common term in Judaism to describe honorable, prominent, older men in the community. How, they who own homes and, you know, had households and kids and were married. And it's not like Paul, like, invented elder as some distinct Christian leadership term. It was an honorable term. You usually describe people who would be the natural leaders of the church. And the fact is, we do have some women who also were prominent household heads who, I think a case can be made. And this would take a much longer podcast to make that these women, typically wealthy,

prominent women who owned homes who probably were, you know, either divorced or widowed, that they carry the same function that an elder would in Judaism. Overseer is a description of the task that some elders were carrying out, but elder is not like an office. It's a term of honor. So in that sense, I think people like Phoebe and Lydia and Priscilla would have been considered elders. And people say, well, they weren't called elders. I'm like, well, hardly any men are called elders in the New Testament.

In fact, the only two men called elder in the entire New Testament are Peter and John in second and third John and first Peter. So just saying, well, women aren't called elders. It's like, well, that doesn't, I don't think that, that's a great argument. Something doesn't need to be a named person doesn't need to be called an elder for them to be the only elders in the New Testament. Anyway, this is something I'm actually working on an extended paper looking deeper into this, specifically a case for female elders overseers. I did talk about it in my book, but there's so much more to be explored here. and this is kind of the project I'm working on right now. Okay, Phoebe, Paul, yeah, so I'll talk about John's critique of my take of Phoebe.

So Paul describes Phoebe as a servant of the church at Cancria, a benefactor or prostatis of Paul and many others, and almost certainly the carrier of Romans. And in the book, I argue that prostatis carries leadership connotations. And I also point out that every other named person Paul calls a servant is a leader in the church. I already talked about this. John, so John doesn't really engage those lexical arguments. Instead, he focuses on my reconstruction of Phoebe's role as a letter carrier. He says this, Sprinkle goes beyond the text to speculate based on what we know about ancient letters,

and she could have read or performed the letter to the Romans and explained things as she went. implication, she was the first person who ever preached the book of Romans. That's his summary of my argument and says, I go beyond the text here. I think my argument was a little more cautious than this. So no one doubts that she carried Paul's letter to the Roman church. As far as I mean, when I say no one, there might be somebody somewhere who doubts that. But if you look at all the commentaries and scholars, I mean, it's pretty well assumed that, um, in the way he commends Phoebe to the Romans in Romans 16, that this is characteristic of a letter carrier,

that she was a letter carrier. So I take that for granted. That's not disputed. And then I explored the historical role that letter carriers performed. And there's a lot of stuff in ancient literature on this. It's not like I cite, you know, one Greco-Roman source or whatever, like Cicero alone talks extensively about letter carriers, other first century writers talk about letter carriers.

We know a lot about the role and function and expectations of letter carriers in the first century. And one of the roles that letter carriers had is that they read or as scholars say performed the letter and would possibly be called upon to explain the letter to the recipients. And so the main point I make about this historical reconstruction is this. and I quote myself here, I want to be cautious not to squeeze too much out of this historical reconstruction. We don't actually know for sure how Phoebe read Paul's letter or if she offered any authoritative interpretation or explanation of his words. These things are historically plausible, maybe even likely, but they're not certain. What we can say with certainty is that Paul trusted Phoebe with a letter vital to his ministry

and, indeed, the history of Christianity. And he didn't have a problem putting a woman in a position where she might be expected to expand upon, interpret, and explain the contents of the letter. So that qualification is important. John, if I remember doesn't mention this, he does he highlights a line that I made in the chapter's conclusion where I say that Paul quote entrusted her with caring and performing his most important letter at the crux of his ministry. I mean, I'm going to stand by carrying. Did she perform it? Most likely, but

yeah, the text doesn't say she did that. So there's a bit of historical reconstruction there. but yeah, I would hope that my concluding statements here would rely on my further explanation and caution in the early parts of the chapter. So, yeah. So to clarify, again, I'll read my point again, what we can say with certainty is that Paul trusted Phoebe with a letter vital to his ministry and indeed the history of Christianity and didn't have a problem putting a woman in a position where she might be expected to expand upon interpret and explain the contents of the letter.

Coupled with Paul's description of Phoebe as a servant of the church at Cancria, again, whenever a named person is called a servant of the church, that person is also a leader. If Phoebe is not a leader, then she's the only exception to that, that what seems to be a rule. She's also called a benefactor or prostatistis, which is a leadership term. Like if you do, if you look at how that word is used in ancient literature, it sometimes is simply translated leader or president of like an organization, oftentimes include some kind of financial benefaction, which is why some people translate it. I think I translated it Benefactor in Romans 16, given the context. So yeah, I still stand by my conclusion that the cumulative evidence suggests

that Phoebe was a leader in the church. And there's just no evidence that she operated under the authority of other male church leaders who occupied like higher levels of leadership. Okay, Junia. John's critique of my treatment of Junia, centers on my discussion of her imprisonment. So it's worth pointing out that I spend a good deal of space in the chapter arguing that Paul calls Junia an apostle and that her apostleship belongs in the same broad category as that of other apostles beyond the 12, such as Paul and Apollus. And so John doesn't, he doesn't engage that part of my argument, which is people can

engage whatever parts they want. but he focuses on me reading too much into the reference of her being a fellow prisoner. He suggests that, I quote, go beyond what the text actually says and that Junia may not have even endured the hellhole sprinkle describes. Unquote. John goes on to raise two other possible alternatives to what being a fellow prisoner could mean. First, you know, fellow prisoner may be figurative, like in Ephesians 3-1.

So kind of I'm a prisoner of the gospel, not literally in prison, just kind of figuratively. Or second, if it is a literal prison, Junia may have been under some form of house arrest like that of Paul in Acts 28. These are two interesting suggestions made by John that I didn't explore in the book. but I did think through them a little more in response to John's critique. So yeah, after doing more research on this, yeah, I don't find either these persuasive at all that Junia may have been a figurative prisoner or that she may have endured some kind of comfy house arrest. So regarding the figurative, interpretation. There have been a few scholars who have suggested this. The Kittles' Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, I'm not sure if Kittles suggested this or if one of the writers of the essays in the dictionary did. And then I found two other scholars who take this view. And also apparently Origin took this view in his letter in his commentary on Romans.

The overall majority of scholars find this interpretation to be incredulous. I looked up, well, several. Here are the ones who don't see any evidence for Junia's imprisonment being figurative. So Doug Mooh, Colin Cruz, Jewett, Fitzmaier, Sandy, and Heedlim, Kesemann, Mounce, Bruce, Morris, Peterson. These are all commentators. And some of the reasons they give for this not being figurative include first the word fellow prisoner. I won't pronounce the Greek word because it's really hard to pronounce. It's paired with fellow countrymen in Roman 16.7, which refers to Andronicus and Junia's literal ethnicity that they were Jews like Paul was.

So because the word it's paired with is literal, prisoner is probably a literal. Second, Paul uses the same word that he uses here. only two other times, Colossians 410 and Philemon 23, and both times it refers to a literal imprisonment. That to me is... Those two points alone are pretty strong evidence. That the only other time the word is used

is to a literal imprisonment. Third, as Robert Jewett argues, the figurative interpretation seems most unlikely because it would then remain unclear why all the other early Christian evangelists mentioned in Romans 16 are not also called fellow prisoners. Like, why single them out as fellow prisoners if he's simply referring to a figurative imprisonment?

Okay, as for the possibility that Junie was in a house, in some sort of house arrest, not a hellish prison. There's just, there's no evidence for this. Paul's own house arrest in Rome happened long after Paul wrote his letter to the Romans. He wasn't in house arrest when he was writing Romans. So he couldn't be referring to his house arrest in Romans 16. And the root term to the term Paul uses here most often refers to a prisoner of war. And a different word is used in Acts 2830 to describe Paul's house arrest. So these are two different words.

So, yeah, all that say, there's much better exegetical evidence for Junia actually doing time in a literal prison. And so what do that? look like, Junie in prison? Well, yeah, that's going to take some historical reconstruction. Does that mean we can reconstruct Junia's prison conditions with certainty? Well, no, of course not. And I try to acknowledge that in my book that, you know, that when you do historical reconstruction, you're looking into what, in this case, what was prison like? What was prison like for women. And you're saying, okay, Junia was in a literal prison in the first century. What was prison like in the first century? What was prison like in the first century for women? And saying,

here is kind of a plausible scenario of what Junia may have gone through. I hope in the book, and I, this is on me if I didn't. I hope that I should acknowledge that, yes, of course, there's always a degree of historically informed speculation. But I think it's worth, I mean, what preacher does not do this. Like when you come across a word in the New Testament, you kind of like open up the historical context of what this would have looked like in the first century. So I think this is just good exe Jesus. Obviously, we should exercise caution. But once you conclude that Junio was literally imprisoned, a responsible interpreter must ask what that meant. That would have meant for a woman in the first century. So I all that to say, I don't think it's going,

is that going beyond the text? I mean, yes and no, you're going beyond the text to understand the text. By going beyond, though, you're not like going against. I guess that would be, I don't think you're going against a text. You're going beyond the text, maybe going underneath the text, like to the historical context. So, yeah, I think that's just what good historical exegesis looks like. Obviously, we should acknowledge degrees of speculation here, but I think it's helpful to explore historically informed color to words that are used, especially when they're used in passing. So all that to say, I appreciate John's pushback for precision here.

But I don't think his objections overturned, the cumulative case I make for Phoebe, Priscilla, and Junia, as women described as Paul as being leaders. All right. John's longest and final section deals with my treatment of 1 Timothy 2, 8 to 15, beginning with my discussion of Authentane in 1st Timothy 212. He appears to agree with me that in the ancient evidence, we possess the word refers to the sort of authority exercised by masters over slaves or rulers over inferiors, but he disagrees that Paul would have regarded that as negative. He actually says the same thing that Tom Shriners said. So this is going to be a little repetitive if you're familiar with how I summed up Tom Shrinner's argument here. So John thinks that I make the mere existence of hierarchy of the problem.

As he puts it, social hierarchies including slavery, were part of the first century world of Jesus and Paul. And though their hierarchies were a little more defined than ours today, we still have hierarchies today. It's simply the way societies are organized and operate. So just because a word is consistently used in a hierarchical context does not make the word inherently negative. Okay, I guess I should, okay, let me back up in case you didn't listen to the previous episode or forgot what I said. First Timothy 212, Paul says, I do not permit a woman to teach nor exercise authority over a man.

The word for authority is authentane. the question is whether this is a negative kind of authority or whether it's a positive kind of authority that only men should exercise but women shouldn't because they're women. That's the debate. And I argue, Othentane refers to a negative kind of authority, specifically the kind of authority that a master would have over a slave, some kind of domineering, top down, lorded over, the kind of thing that Jesus denounce in Mark 10. If you're an avid listener to this podcast, you probably heard me say this like 15 times, so I apologize for the redundancy. So to be clear, I wouldn't say and didn't say that it's the bare fact of hierarchy that makes

authentane a negative word, okay? Rather, it's the kind of hierarchy that surrounds every other use of authentane in ancient literature, as I show in my book, in every occurrence of the verb authentane prior to AD312, few though they may be, the word conveys an authority characteristic of rulers and masters at the top of the secular social hierarchy, the kind of authority both Jesus and Paul directly and consistently denounced. Okay, so that's how I explained what I mean there. So again, it's oftentimes as akin to how the rulers of the Gentiles lorded over others,

according to Mark 10. So John seems to understand that my argument, but doesn't think it carries the weight that I assigned to it. He notes, for instance, that Paul tells slaves to count their massive. pastors worthy of honor and to serve them all the more. First Timothy, 6, 1 to 2. So perhaps Paul was not troubled by this type of hierarchical authority, as I suggest. But what do you think about this? Counterargument. Get a sip of water here while you think. I think this conflates two very different issues. It's one thing for Paul to instruct Christians to live faithfully within a larger social structure they did not yet have the power to dismantle, namely slavery. But it's quite another

thing entirely to say that the church should reproduce that very structure internally as its own model of leadership. Okay. I think that's, to me, that seems, again, this is similar to what I said in regard to Shriner who brought up the same point about Authentane. I just, yeah, don't agree with the pushback. I think it's conflating two different things. Plus, you know, it comes to Paul's instructions to masters. He does challenge masters not to act like masters normally act in Ephesians 6,9, which shows that he does not simply sanctify the social order as it stands.

So I guess, yeah, I don't find it persuasive to argue that Paul must have been comfortable with Christian leaders exercising masterlike dominating authority simply because he also gave instructions to masters and slaves. John also wonders why Paul would forbid only the women from exercising dominaring authority and domineering teaching. Does this mean he allows men to teach and exercise authority in a domineary matter? Seems like an odd thing to say, John says. And John goes on to note that it was domineering men who are a problem for the church in Ephesus.

1 Timothy 2.120 and 2 Timothy 3.6. So why single out only women and prohibit them from being domineering? My quick answer is that I think it's a both and not an either-or. I mean, throughout First and Second Timothy, Paul addresses male-specific problems. First Timothy 120, 29, and female-specific problems, First Timothy 5, 4 to 16. And many other issues that are applicable to both men and women. The entire context of First Timothy 2 815 is directed towards wealthy women who were acting modestly. And there's plenty of historical evidence which shows that the kinds of women Paul describes in 1st Timothy 2,815, wealthy, elite, and modest, unsubmissive, were exactly the kinds of women who would be prone to dominate men, especially in a place like Ephesus.

All right. One more point John raises. And again, I just want to reiterate. I'm not just singling out. I'm not trying to single out John here. It's just John represents the very kinds of critiques I've gotten from other complementarians. So that's why I thought it would be easier just to focus on John's review since it's representative

of many other people. It's not like there's like, you know, 15 other great critiques. And I just spend, you know, what is it, over an hour now, just hammering on John. I'm not hammering on John. I'm interacting. We've hung out since we've had this dialogue. And I don't know if we talked about it. We talked about something else.

I don't know. Anyway, again, appreciate John's thoughtful responses. Okay, so finally, John says that I downplay the argument from male-only elders from 1st Timothy 3, 1 to 7. Yeah, just to clarify, and this is something that I see almost universally is that people refer to 1 Timothy 3 as a statement about elders when it's actually about overseers. And it's, there's a good chance. Overseers, well, at the very least, overseers are probably elders. It's not as clear that all elders are also overseers. And again, if you dig into the scholarly literature on these terms,

there's a long, ongoing technical debate about whether or not elder is a synonym for overseer or whether they're describing overlapping but different categories and functions. Andrew Clark makes a really good case, as does Alistair Campbell in his book, The Elders, that an overseer, like an overseer is a house church leader, teacher, who exists among a larger body of elders. You kind of see this distinction in 1 Timothy 517 where elders are worthy of double honor, especially those who work hard at teaching and preaching, and those who work hard at teaching and preaching might be describing elders who are also overseers.

So in that sense, they wouldn't be simply synonymous. They do seem to be synonymous in Titus 1. It gets a little tricky there. Titus 1-5 calls elders and then says elders, and then in 1-7, He says, overseers. So it seems like he's just correlating the two. And then you also have a possible correlation in Acts 20, verse 17, and I believe it's 28, where he talks to the elders of Ephesus and then calls them overseers.

So there is textual evidence for overseer and elder being synonymous. There's also arguments and reasons why they're not simply synonymous. Anyway, all that to say. Yeah. 1st Timothy 3 talks about overseers um uh john he focuses on the phrase one woman man and first timothy 3 2 which he says that the phrase is male specific um and then he says at one point that quote sprinkles contention that it's not male specific turns out to be false unquote But yeah, I actually

I actually don't camp, I don't say it's not male specific. I argue that it's more descriptive than prescriptive. So, and then John does later quote me accurately saying, quote,

within Paul's ancient context, most qualified overseers would have been married men with children, but Paul is not trying to rule out the possibility of women overseers. But actually, so male-specific, one woman man, and people point out that the word for man there is an error, which is male, not Anthropos, which is a generic human, often applied to men, but also can apply to women as well. But anair is male, male-specific. That's actually not quite true. When Paul addressed the people of Athens in Acts 17, he addressed the men of Athens.

And he uses an error there, this male specific, what people say is male specific. But then at the end of that story, it says that some people, you know, came to Christ, one of whom was a woman. So apparently in the group of an error of these men, this male's quote unquote, male specific term, there was a woman. As is typical in the ancient world, if a group is primarily male, you can use a male specific term. that doesn't mean every single member must be male. You don't always need to use a generic term,

according to social custom in the first century. You see the same thing in James I, where he uses a Nair to describe people generically. So even there, so it is, it is, it's actually not accurate to say Paul uses a male-specific term, one-woman man that must be, that the term a nair is male-specific. Obviously the phrase is assuming a man, one woman man, a man with a husband of one wife, or is how it's sometimes translated.

But the specific word anair doesn't have to be male specific. It's all I'm trying to point out. I didn't even talk about this in my book, actually. So again, my point, but my point wasn't that this is one woman, woman man can, you know, like, oh, that's not male specific. My point was that it's more descriptive than prescriptive. So this section of John's review is, I think, my favorite part of his review because he actually raises some really sharp questions. First of all, he doesn't agree with my plea for consistency because I argue that if we're going to take Paul's words literal and absolute, then we must not only demand that all overseers be male, we must also demand that they are married and have at least two children because Paul says they must be. A husband of one wife, married, and must manage their children well, which is more than one

children. John says this confuses what is situational. You know, if he has kids, they must obey him, with what is not a person's gender. But as I say my book, I just don't, I don't see why we would say some of Paul's requirements are situational like marriage and children, but others being male is not. I mean, John, he simply asserts that, well, this is situational if he's married, if he's married, if he has children, but being a man is not situational. So I just don't, yeah, I don't see the text making that distinction.

I think John's best pushback comes when he addresses my argument that Paul's assuming a situation where most qualified elders would have been men and therefore Paul's requirements for overseers assumes that the ones who would be likely candidates for overseers would be married men who own homes and had children. John points out, Quote, it seems inconsistent with Sprinkles' argument early in the book that women often had more power in the home than men. And thus, they would have been viewed as leaders. And here, John's right. Early in the book, I mentioned several women who were heads of household who hosted churches in their homes, Lydia, Nimpia, Lydia, Nympha, and others.

And I suggest that they probably function as overseers of the gatherings in their home. So the burden of proof is on me to show that Paul did have, such cases in mind when he, I think I read off my notes here. I think I, there's a typo here. So I'm, so the burden of proof is on me to show that Paul did not have such cases in mind when he penned 1st, Timothy 3, these kind of exceptions to the rule. I think the best answer is the one I give in my book, you know, that Paul is describing the most common social profile of a likely overseer in the first century context. He's not necessarily laying down an exhaustive or exceptionless rule about the sex of every future overseer. Most qualified overseers in ancient world would have been married men with children. And Paul was describing a situation, as it were, not prescribing a universal rule for how things must be.

And unless one insists that every overseer must literally be married and have children, I don't see why the male specific language must be taken as an absolute, while the family language is not to be taken as absolute. So, yeah, there's so much more to say on this. Again, I've been working on an extended case for female elders in particular elders and overseers that, you know, kind of takes what I say in my book and extends it much more thoroughly. So, yeah, I'll come back to this in due time. John ends his review with a really fair question, you know, if the male specific language of 1st, Timothy 3 as well as Titus 1 doesn't require male overseers. Why do the church for

1,900 years understand it as requiring male overseers? There have been debates about many things during church history, but about the topic of male elders, pastors, priests, or whatever title is used, the church spoke with one voice for 1900 years. So, yeah, I'm not a church historian. I've been reading a lot about this, and I don't think it's accurate to say that for 1900 years, women were not ever called elders, overseers, priests, pastors. I'll commend you to do your own research. Some books that I found helpful, Lynn Cohic and Amy Hughes, Christian women in the patristic world.

Taylor and Romilly, patterns of women leadership and early Christianity. Karen Torgeson, I'm not sure if that's how you pronounce it, when women were priests. I just finished that one. That was really provocative. That book is really excellent. Actually, I mean, all these are good. Gary Macy, the Hidden History of Women's Ordination, and there's Several Others. So all that to say, it's women in early church leadership is a really complex topic.

Go back to my episode with Lynn Cahick and Amy Hughes. And, yeah, hopefully if you remember that episode, it's like, oh, man, I need to really step back and I would need to dig into church history much more thoroughly before I just assumed that women were not occupying these positions of leadership. But in any case, even if they did, even if they didn't occupy these positions of leadership, I just, I'm still, yeah, not everything the early church embraced, I think was accurate, you know, like I would be interested to hear John's views of of infant baptism in the Eucharist. And also, we have to ask a question in cases where men are, do denounce women leaders or exclude women for leadership,

I do want to dig into the theological rationale for why they said so. Because in several places that I've seen, like in Turtolian and others, their rationale is super misogynistic. It's not complementarian. I mean, complementarians will say, like, no, women are ontologically equal to men in, you know, intellect and even skills and whatever.

But because Adam was born first because of the created order, God has ordained men to occupy positions of pastoral leadership. That's not the logic of most of church history. The logic of most church, many writers that I've read throughout church history is women are inferior, that they are less intellectual. that there are categorically more easily deceived. I mean, after all, Eve was deceived. I mean, it's the rationale for excluding women from leadership. And again, I'm not saying I've read everything on this throughout church history, but the statements I read are pretty perendous.

So there might be some cultural reasons why, not just theological, but cultural reasons why women were excluded from leadership. But again, it's, I think it's, based on the research I've done so far, I think it'd be wrong to say women were. categorically, they didn't serve in leadership positions throughout church, church history. But that's something we should come back to. All right, let's turn to some egalitarian critiques of my book.

If you would like to listen to the extra innings portion of this podcast where I discuss some critiques and reviews of my book from an egalitarian perspective, including my interaction with Beth Barr and others, please head over to patreon.com. forward slash theology to raw. Check it out. Again, that's patreon.com forward slash theology and raw.