Theology in the Raw - Nijay Gupta on Women in Leadership, Receiving Criticism, and Paul's Vision for Meaning in this Life.

Episode Date: March 23, 2026

Preorder Nijay's upcoming book, Paul for the WorldJoin me at Exiles in Babylon in Minneapolis! April 30-May 2.Buy From Genesis to Junia on AmazonBig thanks to the amazing people at Westside Community Church in Beaverton for hosting and production!Nijay K. Gupta (PhD, Durham University) is Julius R. Mantey Professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary. Gupta is an award-winning author of numerous books, including Tell Her Story, Strange Religion, and commentaries on Galatians, Philippians, Colossians, and 1 and 2 Thessalonians. He is also a senior translator for the New Living Translation, and co-host of the Slow Theology podcast. He joined me talk about the response to From Genesis to Junia and his own experience writing on women in leadership. He also shared about his upcoming book, Paul for the World. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

All right, Nijay Gupta, we are here in Portland. Yes, we are. Yes, we are. So good to see you in your hometown. Welcome. Welcome to the Rose City. You've been in Portland for how long? Almost 12 years. Okay.

Does it feel like home? It does. Yeah. It does. I've heard like seven years in a city that feels like home. Okay. Yeah. My kids, it's pretty much all they remember and all they know.

Yeah. You're a Portlander. Yeah. How would you describe Portland? I mean, everybody has a perception. I feel like the internal perspective isn't always the same as the out. Yeah. External perspective.

I mean, is it. as liberal and progressive and protest everywhere as people think? It is. I mean, you know, when we had, you know, all the crazy ice stuff, you know, what you know from, which is pretty true for the media is we mobilize the frog suits. Do you remember the frog suits? Right? And then the naked bicycle ride.

Oh, yeah. That's my first. I first heard about that. Is that still going? Is it still going like they just go to live? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, does that thing? People ride bikes?

Oh, yeah. It's a huge thing. So, you know, we tell our kids like, okay, it's that time. So stay inside. Okay. That just seems impractical for multiple reasons. Don't question it, Preston. I don't question it.

Is this what we're talking about? Naked bikes for rights. Yeah, I'll describe it. I'll describe it to you. You know, the perception. The perception is like, you know, oh, it's this, you know, give the finger to the man sort of thing. And there's some of that.

You know, when I think of Portland, the creatives, you know, it's a city. of loads of creativity, you know, places like the Bible Project would be an example of just beautiful creativity. It really is a place of like individual expression. And some parts that I really like, like, you go to, you know, a certain other maybe suburban city and it's like everybody has to have these shoes. Everybody has to wear these clothes. And here it's like, you just look around and like people are just wearing whatever they want. Okay. And there's no keeping up with the Jones. Is this like You do you.

No, the keeping of the Joneses is like be yourself self-expression. And that leads to some lack of kind of cultural stickiness there with kind of we're all in. But we have sports to do that. You know, we're always lamenting the trailblazers and that sort of thing. That's a big sports town, big baseball town, actually. Yeah, there's a lot of love for baseball. Oregon State. One of the colleges here has one of the best baseball programs in the nation.

I don't follow baseball as much, but yeah. We got ducks and beavers, all you want. So you, I have recently entered the space of being a male evangelical writing on women in leadership. So I need some mentorship here because the reviews are mixed. They've been overall very, very positive, you know. But even people that agree with my conclusion. I'm starting to see like some people aren't

that excited that I'm the one There's an embodiment factor Yeah Talk to me. Did you? Because you wrote, in my opinion I mean, one of, I mean, there's so many good books out there. There's good books, yeah. Yours is absolutely one of the best,

if not my favorite, that deals with like thorough scholarship but very readable. Yeah. Your readability was that's very rare for a scholar to do that but you did not shrink back from the scholarship too and that's kind of what I love to do as well

so like your book I actually purposely when I read your book a while ago but I purposely when doing research for this I said you know what every time I look at Niji I feel like I think he gets it but I don't want to like I don't want to read the passage

through the lens so I'm like I want to do my own research and then come back to you and every time I came back I'm like gosh he's saying he's finding the same things I am too so I think we're like I've been methodologically, and we come from similar backgrounds of, you know, kind of a very traditional, conservative, you know, I went to Gordon Conwell, and we learned a lot of the same exegetical methods and tools and read the same people. I was a big Piper Grudham person in the 90s. I was involved in Campus Crusade for Christ in college, and the thing to do if you were a serious Christian was to read Grudom's systematic theology cover-to-cover, and if you did, your Bavasai leader would buy you a steak dinner. That was the thing. So that's kind of how I was, you know. But I did have to enter that world of was it mean to be a man writing on the subject. And I was naive. And I went into it just thinking, hey, I'm interested in the subject. You know, I'm going to write this. And thankfully my publisher, IVP academic, to their credit, was like, we need to be eyes wide open on unintended consequences of me doing this.

You know, because it can be triggering for people. And there's that sense of, you know, when I first started promoting tell her story, again, naively, you know, I have people saying like, it should be a woman. It shouldn't be you. You're taking the place of a woman. And, you know, oh, my gosh, like, I don't want at all to be mansplaining the subject. I know that's your heart too. You don't want to be like, oh, you know, move aside. Let a man tell you, you know.

But, you know, my wife, Amy, who has had a journey of finding her calling. in ministry. She's had pastoral ministry experience. She had a history of men telling her, hey, the man has to lead, you can't preach, you can't do these things. So it was really meaningful for her for me to be vocal. And that was a big inspiration for my work. But as I was putting together, tell her story, finalizing it in discussion with my editors, one of them being Anna Gissing, who's phenomenal editor, another John Boyd. And the whole team in IVP, which are mostly women, you know, the academic team there,

we decided to do a couple things, and I think you do some of this in your book, is some self-reflection. Because I've never been mean to women, I don't think, but I have definitely left women out. I've not used my platform in the right way sometimes, I've not, you know, I think often sins of omission, rather than sins of commission. So, for example, I was teaching class once early in my career, and a woman asked to meet with me,

a student after class. And so we sit down, and she said, she was pretty upset. She said, every time you use a student as an example, you always use a man. And often I'm doing in a teasing way, like, you know, let's say I'm talking to Billy Bob, you know, da-da. and she, and I had to do some self-reflection there. And I realized I did it because I didn't want to embarrass a woman by being like, you know, Stephanie, you know. So I just felt that comfortability with men.

But unintended, it had this effect of her feeling left out. Like, oh, he's telling me with all these guys and then where the women fit, that sort of thing. I can go both ways, though. If you're like all of a sudden, like, joking around about a woman's dude, and I could see somebody saying like, gosh, you're a male with all this power and you're like demeaning this woman.

I mean, not. that that is what you're doing, but I can see somebody perceiving. Totally. You're not going to remember this, Preston, but we had a conversation, and you asked a question that I really appreciated.

We had a conversation maybe seven, eight years ago. And you asked me, how do I engage with diverse scholars without it seeming like tokenism? You probably don't remember this. But I really valued that. And what I said was, the people you're engaged with

have to know that you actually care about what they think. Okay. And not just, hey, I'm going to put you on a poster. Can I put you on a poster? And, you know, I've seen that modeled in your ministry where, you know, even the times I've seen you talk about sexuality where you invite people of different experiences to a table of conversation, give them the microphone, let them speak.

And I think with these situations of the classroom, it's a matter of really getting to know these students. so that there's a personal relationship there rather than, you know, oh, I got to diversify who I'm, you know, looking at a roster, like, actually getting to know these students. Right.

So there is some mutuality of understanding and friendship there as best we can. So I think you've, you know, your heart's there, which is great. It's hard, like there's a difference between your intention and the optics of something too. And sometimes your intentions could be good, truly, not always,

but sometimes, but the optics are still there. You know. How have you, did you, so you kind of insinuated, you did get some critique for being a man speaking into this topic. How do you, how do you, well, two things. How do you, first of all, how do you think through that critique, and then how do you respond maybe more public, or do you respond publicly?

Yeah, good question. One of them is sort of how I think about scholarship. and how I think about scholarship is, to me, it's not an either-or. It's not either a woman writes on the subject or a man writes on it. It's really like, I think the same with you. Like, this is a research interest of mine. And this is an area where I have had some false assumptions. I have gone down the wrong trails of scholarship in the past.

So one thing we did when I was working on my book is, you know, partly at the behest of some of the IVP team is like, because an academic book, I was going to put my story in it, but they said, it would help if you put a little bit of your story in the introduction and just say, I used to think this way, I used to have these thoughts, and then this. So it was a little bit of a mea coppa so that the book could be an invitation, an encouragement to women, but maybe an invitation for men to rethink some of their lenses and assumptions. That was helpful. The other is the reviewers, the blind reviewers,

where women, that's one thing, obviously they don't tell you who the blind reviewers are, the publishers, reviewers. But for them to be women, they're able to speak into the book. Right, right, right. They're able to give me their lenses. That was really helpful. And the question is, are you part of a community of men and women in scholarship together? Or are you a lone ranger out there just saying, here's the right answer, go and, you know, be the church. I want to make sure I'm integrated into these conversations.

And you did a good job. I know this because you reached out to me. And you're like, hey, will you read this stuff? Oh, you shredded it. What I love about you, man, is we're friends, but you put on your scholarly hat. And you are like, dude, this is lame, dude. This is, oh, come on. Like, you, you, but it was so helpful.

I corrected a lot of things after your feet. I appreciate that. I didn't necessarily disagree with your ideas. is a lot of it was how you approach, how you approach the topic. But like I think two things I'd say in terms of navigating, you know, navigating this world.

One is humility. And I think you've done this already, but just having that posture of humility of like, there's a quote I go back to a lot. It's by Cornell West. And he says, if you want to know the truth, let suffering speak. I've tried to have that.

As I hear people critique me. So, for example, this is unrelated to the subject, but I got a Facebook message from somebody who is upset about something I'm involved in. And he wrote a really lengthy critique. And we know each other's acquaintances, but he's someone I respect. I didn't have a good answer to answer him. So I just took some time. I prayed about it. And I just said, I received that.

I've heard you. I received the critique. Like, I, you know, I'm willing to be pierced by this. Because I didn't want to explain and manage and I didn't want to. So, you know, you can let suffering speak without agreeing with the person's approach or even their methods or even their tone and just say, God, what do you want me to gain from this? And sometimes God says nothing, move on. But often God will say they're suffering here. Where's that suffering coming from?

Yeah, that's good. That's good. The exiles in Babylon conference is happening again. April 30th to May 2nd in Minneapolis, and this one is going to be spicy. We're talking about mental health and the gospel. How should the church respond to immigration? We're also having a dialogical debate about Christians and war with Shane Claiborne and Paul Copan. And we're also having another dialogical debate between Peter N's and Sandy Richter over the historical reliability of the Bible. We also added a pre-conference addressing how Christians should think

about artificial intelligence. We have several experts coming to lead us in that conference. conversation. Other speakers include Dan Allender, Matthew Sorens, Liliana, Reza, Joshua Smith, Chinway Williams, and several others. And of course, worth the price of admission. Street Hymbs is coming back as well, folks. Most of all, the in-person experience at exiles is just super unique. I mean, it's, I don't know. If you've been there, you know what I'm talking about. It's hard to describe. You just got to go and experience it for yourself. Just head over to theology in raw.com to register. We also have a heavily discounted Gen Z price. Don't lie about age, you've got to be Gen Z, and also discounts on groups of five or more. Again, that's April 30th to May 2nd in Minneapolis. Register at Theologyinthorah.com. It's finally here, folks. After three and a half years of research and writing, my new book from Genesis to Junia is available. Oh my word. As a subtitle suggests, this book represents my honest search for what the Bible really says about women in leadership. I combed through all the major passages that deal with the question of women the leadership, I evaluate the strongest arguments on all sides of the debate.

I do my best to let the text determine what we should believe about this important topic. From Genesis to Junie is now available wherever books are sold. Yeah, it's funny because if I think through all of the feedback I've gotten just from women so far, you know, DMs, emails, personal relationships, people I know of but not personally, people I you know scholars in the field I know personally like I mean I would say based on you know the last week since the book's been out probably not 95% has been not only positive but thank you for yeah yeah using your voice as a man like like they even identify my mailness as a good thing speaking in but there has been some people I do I mean some people I kind of know know of and stuff that

would be have been much more critical not for my conclusion but just because i'm running on this topic i feel like i don't know i just i i and maybe this is my naiveness but like yeah i'm just i'm i'm i'm i am a man i didn't choose to be that and i i want to know what the bible says about lots of topics and i don't have a personal experience with all the topics i'm talking about like i i'm interested in what it says about uh ethnicity multi-ethnic churches and ethnic diversity. And I can't represent all of that diversity. I've written on sexuality about, you know, what the Bible says about certain experiences that I don't have. So part of this is I've kind of been here, done that. I've gotten, no matter what I write on,

somebody is going to critique me because I don't have the experience of the thing I'm writing on. But yeah, so that's my heart. But it's like I, like you said, I want to, I really want to self-reflect and try to understand and listen to the critique and see if there's something there. I think about that with like Paul advocating for Onesimus. And one of the critiques of Onesmus is a slave, right? And one of the critiques from a kind of non-Christian perspective, one of the critiques is he's advocating for O'Nesimus,

but he's not himself a slave and he's not using O'Nesimus' voice. that's one of the, okay, so it's kind of a similar situation. You've done work on Philemon, yeah. Yeah, it's an interesting situation. I want to go back, though, in terms of how I've been processing, sort of tell her story, you know, two, three years later. We have a mutual friend, Joey Dodson. Yes.

Well, one of my favorite people in the world. And he texted me just a short, a little small picture of a student paper. And I'd written an article on Mary the Mother of Jesus, like seven, eight years ago. and someone was quoting me and they said, as feminist scholar, Nij Gupta said, and it was before I wrote Tell her Story.

So he sent that to me, he goes, did you know you're a feminist scholar? And I said, I said, that's funny. I'm like, I'm going to have to earn that. And I end up writing Teller Story,

but, you know, what I would say, you press and you've written this book now. To me, it's not a question of whether you should have written it or not. It's a question of, now that you've written it,

you have responsibility. Okay, yeah. Like you, you've been inducted into a club. And in this club now, God, I believe God has given a responsibility to come through on how are you going to live this out

in supporting women. And some people will say, some people said to me, Nijay, to be a male advocate means getting out of the way. I definitely think sometimes that will mean me saying, oh, Nijie, will you write this?

I have these recommendations of other people that should write this. Sometimes I think that is, I think part of the responsibility. Sometimes it's like, I should co-write this with somebody. So I've been moving in the space of co-writing, partly to, you know, bring spotlight to other scholars, partly to mentor younger female scholars who are coming up and using my capital to support them, that sort of thing. I filter my grid, you know, just like you, I'm busy, so I can't say yes to everything. But, you know, certain situations where I have an opportunity to support, you know, a female student or a female scholar, kind of that, you know, preferential option. Like, I'm going to, you know, because I wrote this, it's a responsibility.

Right, right. You know, it's not just, here's my idea, here's my idea, I got some ideas out there. Like, you know, it's, it's, I see it as kind of a making good on kind of a calling that I have. Yeah. I think my space is interesting. I mean, because I'm not in a church, I'm not at a school, there's certain, I have certain lanes that I'm in or certain spaces that I'm in that are, yeah. Yeah, I'd love to explore like what that looks like. My podcast, I've had a policy for a long time to try to have as many female guests as male guests.

And sometimes I'll look. And it's like, gosh, I have like seven men in a row, you know. But then other times, they'll have like five, six women in a row. But I do try to have, but I've always done that. Even when I was more complimentary, I still did that. Because I don't think, I think even if leadership roles are reserved from men in the church, women are still brilliant, intelligent, have much to offer the church. you know so even if i did lay in commentarian i think i would still have that policy you know because i think

that's just genesis one it's it's you know we're all creating in god's image um but yeah it'll be yeah i would love to explore other ways in which i could i can do that because i do i do think you're right you throw a book out there like that and uh you can't just throw it out there and run away you know we're like all right here you go i'm on to the next thing like what does it mean to to really lean in And yet I don't want, I really don't like some of the tribalism on both sides. And so, yeah, I have to really navigate what that looks like because I still respect and have friends who are complementarian. And I think they got there with good motives, you know. At the same time, yeah, I do think the Bible does not teach that.

And so I do want to live out. faithfully to the view that I think scripture is advocating for without falling into some of the tribalism that I just think is unhelpful for the church. Do you have any thoughts on how to do you know? This is where social media is a real challenge because we are often, not often, but we're sometimes being attacked without being invited in conversations. My posture, my posture towards book writing, you'll appreciate this. Part of it I was influenced by Francis Watson, New Testament scholar. I love Francis. And Francis said something once.

I don't remember where he said it, but it really stuck with me. He says, some people write a book, and it's a tome, and it's like, this is the last word on this subject. Yes. But Francis said, when I write a book, and he writes some shorter ones,

it's more of a conversation starter. Yes. It's not designed to be the last word. It's designed to say, I had this idea. Now let's have a conversation about it. And I've been approaching my scholarship that way. So it would tell her story,

when someone, oh, you're wrong and you shouldn't and I'm like, good, this is part of the conversation. Rather than, no, no, no, I got to defend this thing. Why didn't you include this? Why didn't you include that? Great, that's what this conversation is for. Now let's talk about it. Where can we go with this next? I'll give you a couple things I think that I've learned over the years.

One is, and I'll tell a little anecdote that's helped me, thinking about Venn diagrams, you and I are in a similar circle of coming out of or perhaps on the margins of. of kind of mainstream American evangelicalism. And when people critique evangelicalism, I like to say, that's my weird family. Yeah. You know, like, I'm happy to critique them, but I critique them as one of them.

Yes. You know? And so I think of like Venn diagram. So we're this circle, and other people are reading your work or my work, and they're overlapping a little bit with it, whether it's like from a more mainline perspective, whether it's from an ex-Christian,

perspective, you know, Catholic or whatever, it's helpful to know where that overlap is and where it's not to say like, I receive your critique, but, and I don't necessarily say it's people, but in my own mind, what God has called me to is this circle. And that prevents me from having to feel like I have to put out every fire. You know, why didn't you mention this scholar or this argument or this, or this rabbinic thing or that, you know, I'm talking to me. my people. So let me tell this story. This has really stuck with me. When Hamilton, the musical, went on Disney Plus, the video form, there was an interview between the cast and a younger group of diverse artists, actors and whatnot. And there was a question from the younger artist

posed to the guy that played Aaron Burr, and his name escapes me right now. And the younger artist said, you guys didn't do enough with the slavery issue and these people being slaveholders. You didn't do enough. And it was very pointed. And for me, I get defensive and be like, you know, I'm Aaron Burr, you know, like, but he handled it really well. And he said, listen, our job was to move the ball from here to here. And even though we're not perfect, I feel like we did that. Then he said, I'm excited to see where you're going to take it. And he wasn't defensive. And he wasn't like, how dare you? He was kind of like, he defended and explained in a very gracious way. Here's our vision for how we wanted to change people's perceptions, how we wanted to change

how musicals work, how we wanted to bring in people that look different, to explain. And then, you know, I see passion in you. I love, I love the questions you're bringing. I'm looking forward to, you know, and I've approached it a lot that way when people say, you know, Oh, you shouldn't have or you should have, you know, here's my Venn diagram circle. Here's my people. Right. And I wanted to use the language and the scholarship. And I didn't do it perfectly.

And I even realize that now. I wish I would have done this and that and the other. But I see you're kind of over here. And I love that. And like, how can we partner together to figure out how to shed light on this thing that we care about? More and more, I'm like, I want to have friendly, in-person conversations, find mutual understanding. And once we have that, then you could pick and provoke and prod.

That'll have a much bigger effect on me. But understanding those circles has been really helpful to me to say, like, I have this group that comes from where I come from. And I kind of know what it takes for them to listen to me. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, gosh, for a second edition or whatever, I'd love to learn more about, you know. Are you planning on writing anything else on women in? As a matter of fact.

Really? Yeah. So a couple things coming out. One is Carmen Iams and I have co-written a teenage version. No way. A tweener. A tweener version of Teller Story, or at least inspired by Teller Story. It's called Fierce and Faithful. Awesome. And it's about 25 women who demonstrate faith and wisdom in the Bible. So Carmen has written the Old Testament side. And I've written the New Testament. It's going to be illustrated. I have a 14-year-old, and she was helping me. out with this when she was 12. So that's really exciting. Because people came up to me after tell her story and they're like, I wish I had something for my kids. So that's one.

And then I will tell you, exclusive here, exclusive press. Exclusive. Yeah. That I do have a follow-up book to tell her story coming out in 2027 called God spoke through her, which is about women prophets in the Bible. Oh, no. Oh, you told me. You hinted that before.

I didn't know how it was a book. I remember you said you were digging. into that. Yeah, and the whole idea behind that is I'll just give you like a 30 second rundown. When I wrote Teller's Story, the vision to tell her story is God's plan for the church is men and women leading together. I mean, we see this with Adam and Eve. We see this with Andronicus and Junia. We see this with Priscilla and Quilla. But what I realized after writing Teller Story was in many situations today, people think for a woman to have to have a woman to have a woman to have a have any voice or authority, it has to be contingent upon a man. It has to be based on a man,

husband or father, whoever. And then I, as I was studying scripture, I realized there's this category of profit. And these are these people who are not under anybody. They are like free-range people. And I was reading Abraham Heschel's, the prophets. I read it in seminary. I reread it recently. And he says, the prophets feel the blind. last of heaven. And I just thought you have these ranging prophets who are out there

like cowboys or cowgirls who are, you know, your Haldas and your Miriams and your Debra's and your Annas and your Mary the Mother of Jesus exhibits some of this. And they don't operate in the normal power structure society. Are you

a Dune fan? I wouldn't say Dune fan. I appreciate this story in the movie. Okay. It's hard to follow it's hard to follow. It is hard to follow.

It is hard to follow. But do you remember these women called the Benegeser? Yeah, yeah. I think the Benadessarit are based on the biblical prophets. Really? I've tried to like have

conversation with Chat Chippee to figure this out. But you have these women, you know, so you have the normal world of Dune, which is men who are emperors and kings and da-da, and the women are kind of...

And then you have these other group of people, the Benadetzeret, who have miraculous powers, who have prophetic powers, and who operate outside the normal structure society. And so that gives us a glimpse of spirit-filled people who don't need anybody, whether it's a male prophet or a female prophet, they're not beholden to kings and counselors. They're not beholden to priests, you know, or whoever, high priest, chief priests,

they're their own thing. Look at John the Baptist. And to bring that imagination to say, before a woman can fully find or man, their footing in ministry, they really have to find their personal calling from God. I love the Quakers because the Quakers, so I used teach at George Fox, Quaker Institution, they don't have ordination where a church ordained you. They have recording, meaning the church is recording God's ordination of you. God is the one ordaining you. The church is recording it. I like that. That's my my, I don't know if that's your... With the prophets, are you doing like a character study going through the prophets,

or is it on like prophecy or prophets in the ancient world? I would imagine you do background work and stuff. Yeah, yeah, it's both. Do you have, what happens after the New Testament? Like, do you have... This is a question I get a lot, and I just, this isn't my area. It's not what I wrote on, not my area of expertise. But if the New Testament does advocate for women in leadership, which you and I think it does,

why did that seem to drop off almost immediately in the second century? And onward. And some people say, well, no, there were, you know, women leaders. But I just haven't worked through the material. But even something like female prophets, did you have, you clearly are female prophets in the first century. Do you have female prophets like you're talking about into the early church? You do. There's a really fascinating story behind this. And so you must know the name perpetua. Yeah, sure. Right. So perpetua is never called a prophet, but she clearly exhibits visions, almost even on demand. I think her brother is like, hey, you should get a vision for blah, blah, blah.

And she's like, okay, you know. So she exhibits aspects of kind of being a prophet, even though no one specifically calls her that. So you have that kind of example. The problem is we don't have great records of stories from second and third century. What we do have is the dida kay. The dida kay lays out some stuff like if someone shows up,

and actually I'd have to go back and look specifically what the dida kay says, but it almost makes it sound like profit was like you walk into a church and there's like doors with like labels like pastor, you know, and they'll be like prophet. Like they're like churches had prophets as part of their staff, so to speak. Okay. I think so.

In the Diddique you're saying, it gives a sense that profit was almost like a church office. Yeah, kind of. Yeah. Yeah. It kind of assumes, you know, it's not introducing it, but it's assuming it. So there are kind of things like that. I do think, you know, you and I, this isn't our field of patristics, but if I had to guess, and all it would be is a guess, is once the church starts trying to organize, sort of the default

dynamics of patriarchy, just kind of swoop in. And, you know, you kind of see that even in the first century where, you know, if you have this spirit-filled, Pentecost driven, like, we're going to have men and women, you have your nympha and, you know, Leo DeCia or whatever, and you know, you have your, you know, women of Roman 16, it's still going to be a male-driven world. Right. You know, so unless you kind of have your wits about you of being really, really intentional, these default settings are just going to be dominant. I was wondering if, you know, you do see in the early church kind of the adoption of certain,

like, philosophy, like neoplatonism and even some Aristotelian thought and stuff. And that would be my guess. again, from the glimpses I see it seems to be at least part of the reason, but you do seem to have like a philosophical views of men and women that were being challenged, I think, by the New Testament, but were kind of adopted a bit by the early fathers, you know, where they would, yeah, talk about women. I don't know if they echoed Aristotle, you know, that women are deformed men or whatever. I think that higher view of women, but you still had, you know, philosophy of male and female that were kind of shaping their views a bit. Do you know if that's

true? I see in other areas like Augustine, you know, like he definitely, you know, I think of his view of like hell, you know, he held to eternal conscious torment, right? Because the soul's immortal, you know, and it's got to live forever somewhere. And so therefore I must live on forever. But that seems to be like a philosophical assumption, not something he's like driving from the text. I think these wider cultural forces are just so hard. I mean, even today, you know, things about race, things about gender,

things about, you know, xenophobia, whatever. It's insidious, you know? So you have to always kind of be paying attention or else. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know. Not my area, but those are my guesses. So you have another book in the works

where it's actually coming out. Tell us about that. Yeah. Yeah, so it's called Paul for the World, a grounded vision for finding meaning in this life, not just the next. And the idea behind the book, really, I call it an inverted polyantheology. So the idea for this book really came about through my students.

So I teach a polyan theology class that I've taught for 15 years. And for the first 10 years of teaching it, I have an open topic research paper. And students usually choose some of the classic subjects of pneumatology, eschatology, soterology, ecclesiology. And just in the last five years, students started to change what they wanted to talk about. And especially in the last two or three years, and students would say, I want to study poverty,

Paul and poverty. I want to study Paul and mental health. One student said, I want to study Paul and the neighborhood. And they're asking me for resources. And I'm like, gosh, in an affordable $20 book, like,

because you have to go to monographs, you know, if you're doing poverty, it's going to be like, you know, Bruce Longanacker and Peter Oaks and some of these monographs that are, you know, expensive and complex.

If it's on, you know, race, you know, there's stuff out there. It's kind of hard to find on Paul and ethnicity. David Horrell and some other folks. Love Seacrest. So I just thought in one easy-to-read book, could we be talking about?

So I have chapters on work, mental health, the arts. I have one on sports. Paul's use of sports language. No way. And what that says about what sports mean in our life today. I didn't grow up as a sports person at all. And through my wife, who's like a super jock, she got me into sports.

So now I'm really into soccer and my kids are into all these different lacrosse and volleyball and whatnot. So I have a chapter on sports. And the tagline for the book is the gospel doesn't encourage us to think about different things than this world, but rather to think about this world differently. Wow. And what I try to do in the book is I combine Paul's theology with Dietrich Bonhoeffer's conception of worldliness. Okay.

Okay. So, have you heard of his idea of worldliness? No. Okay. So his idea is he talks about God out of the box, God of the machine, De Osex Machina. And this comes from ancient Greek plays. And what you'd have is you'd have humans in some fight

and then the protagonist is in dire straits, and there's no way to resolve this. So what you do in the Greek play is you'd actually dress someone up like a god, put them on the rafters, and you literally pulley them down. And you pulley them down, and they solve the problem using miracles, and then you pulley them back up. And that phenomenon is God out of the machine. This God swoops in from the outside.

And so Bonhoeffer said, it is actually an aberration of Christian theology to have a God who swoops in from the margins. and what the incarnation and the Christ event and the death and resurrection Jesus teach us is how God comes to the very center of the world. And he started to use this term worldliness. We normally think of it as a bad thing. Oh, so he was, yeah, worldliness is not the sinfulness of the world.

No, he means fully investing in the world the way God's invest in the world in order to transform the world. Okay. And so I have three categories I talk about my book that are in competition. one is holy otherworldliness. And that's that sense of like, nothing happens to this world matters. All that matters is dying and going to heaven or sitting in the church and praying

or kind of getting away from all the bad stuff in the world. That's one category, and I call that kind of an escapist theology. Another category is unholy worldliness. So this is First Corinthians, where the Corinthians are trying to use spiritual resources, to make themselves great in this world. So you're talking about like tongues versus prophecy.

And he's saying, you guys are just trying to show off. And then the third category is holy worldliness. So I'm trying to make this sound like an oxymoron. So we think a worldliness is bad. Yeah. But you and I are both love NT Wright's work. NT Wright talks about the church as working models of new creation. Yeah.

And I really try to bring that to how people think of Paul's theology. because so often when, and maybe you were like this, you could tell me where you're like this as a teenager. When you're reading the letters of Paul, I used to scan for the theology bits. Eschatology, pneumatology, and you just try to like push us. Romans 1 to 11, and then you start phasing out after that. Yeah, you push aside the other stuff, you know, all the like, you know, money, slavery, whatever. Just that's worldly stuff. Let's just get to the, you know, Zah, the most important bits.

And what I realized is, even though Paul gives deep theology in his letters, the reason he writes his letters tend to be for this worldly issues. I'm going to tell you this. You tell me if you know this story. So in the fourth century, there were actually canonical debates about whether to include Philemon in the canon. There was? Yeah.

Oh. I thought all Paul's letters were. No. Oh. There was vigorous debate about this. And the reason wasn't theological in the sense that we think. it wasn't that there was anything heretical. The argument that was made against including Philemon was that it doesn't say anything about salvation or the afterlife.

It doesn't say anything about the death of Christ, atonement, you know, final judgment. And so unnamed theologians, you know, Chrysostom and others are battling with them. these unnamed theologians are saying it's mundane. Therefore, it shouldn't be an akin to because it doesn't really teach us anything about the gospel. And Jerome, Chrysostom, others jumped in and said, actually, we have to have this book. They're battling the Gnostics, who are these people that think there's this huge gap between heaven and earth, to show that the same God of heaven is the same God of Earth and that the gospel has a transformative effect on things in this life like human relationships between,

Onesimus and Philemon. Interesting. And so it's a fascinating discussion that happened where they're defending the inclusion of Philemon because it's this worldly, not excluding it because it's this worldly. Did they see Philemon? I'm curious, as a critique of slavery? Or how did the early church view, yeah, that contribution to how they viewed slavery? Generally speaking, they don't pick on it as a problem, as an institution.

Okay. Generally speaking, what they want to say is just what Paul says in many ways. We want to make sure everyone's treated fairly and rightly within their situation. But they never mention we need to have mass abolition or anything like that. That's not mentioned by the church fathers explicitly as far as I could tell. But the way I like to think about it, and I talk about this and tell her story a little bit, is, because it's easy to look back and say, you know, you should have, you know. But the way I look at it is, you know, you think about cancer treatment today and you think about chemo. I was just talking about

this with a friend. He has a close person to them who's going through, you know, a cancer journey. And chemo is barbaric. I mean, it's literally poison. And I have, I have a child who had cancer. So I would be giving her, you know, I'd be crushing these pills. And I had to wear gloves. Oh, gosh. She's, you know, two years old. I'm wearing these gloves to crush these pills. I can't inhale it, so I have to wear a mask. This is before the point pandemic.

And I have to mix it with apple juice, put it in a syringe, and squirt it in her mouth. And if she spits it out, I have to do it all over again. And it literally is killing her. But right now it's all we know. In 100 years, there'll be some way better thing. But this is what we know now. So 100 years from now, they're going to look back and say, they're putting poison their kids?

that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. But right now we can't, we have no idea. Right. We just know this kind of works. That's interesting. And so when I think about slavery, you know, Scott Magnitas said, uh,

the apostles were blind to the evils of the institution. Meaning they didn't have a big enough picture. Of slavery to say, wouldn't it be better if, you know, um, if you look back to the old videos, have you ever done this on, you know, TikTok, whatever. We watched the old videos about the debates about having seatbelts.

No. It's so funny where they're like interviewing people like, how do you feel about like, oh, it's restrictive and it's tight and I don't want to, you know, or having alcohol in the car? Oh yeah. They have these interviews and documentaries where they're like, after a tough work, day of work, I just want to have a beer in a car. And we look back and we're like, this is crazy. This is crazy town. But it's like there's a movement that happened where we know. these things that people don't. I don't think that lets everybody off the hook. In my book, Strange Religion, I say Christians were too slow to be thinking about these things. But I think we just have to be careful. So you would say, or Scott would say, and it seems like you agree that

like Paul and others were more blind to the evils, not that they just didn't have the ability to overturn the institution. It's just there's just not even in the cards of something this early church could even done. So they had to work within a system. that was just so pervasive. But like Christians living during the, you know, example off the top of my head, I don't know if it'll work, but like, you know, a church in communist China or something, you know. If they saw communism as evil, it's like, we can't,

we can't have to work within that. We can't, like, overthrow communism as a network of house churches or something. I mean, think how. Or could it be at both hand. Think how far removed we are from that time. I mean, thousands of years. And there's so much. much today we take for granted, like marrying for love. Just something, generally speaking,

you don't do in the ancient world. Democracy. You know, the kind of democracy we have. Just, you know, I mean, so it's so easy for us with the information we have and the cultural movements we have to look back. I say, you know, but, um, for example, you know, but like I have a cousin who had, you know, he's not Christian, uh, and he hadn't arranged marriage and he was having marital problems. And the Indian system, he grew up in India, the Indian system is very like the man's in charge, the woman, you know, stays at home and cooks and whatever. And, you know, my wife and I were trying to give him some advice because they're having

problems. And it wouldn't make sense for me to be like, you need to have a completely equal marriage. Because culturally just is just out of the orbit. But there are things we can do, you know, listen to your wife, you know, when you're planning vacation, you know, like we're trying to work within some of the structures he already knows because he doesn't have the same worldview. We do. And I think in many ways, they were trying to do that with slavery. The way I explain it in some of my work is they were trying to transform it from the inside out. Right. Yeah. Rather than from the outside in. Right. Like Philemon

would have been a very, very radical message to the Greco-Roman ears that, right? I mean, or would it? I don't know. I think that. I think that. There's some diplomacy in there in the letter. Okay. Because he never, one of the critiques is he never comes right out and says, free him. He says things that I think are more subtle because they're using Christian theology, like treat him as a beloved brother. What does that mean? If you're my equal, treat him like that as well.

You know, what does that mean? I'm going to come visit you and check up on you. What does that mean? Some of those things. It's kind of passive aggressive. You have to... Or he wants Spilead. Shrewd.

He kind of wants Philemon to come to the right understanding on his... kind of on his own, right? Rather than Paul beating him over the head, I'm an impossible. You better do this. There's a couple factors involved here. One is he's writing to a group of people.

Yeah. He's not just writing to Philemon. Talk about Afi and Airstarkas, who are in the introduction. So, are you an arrested development fan? I'm not. No. I apologize.

We can talk office if you want. All right. This is a particular scene where Michael and his father are talking and they're talking about Michael's brother. And they're talking very plainly about the brother's problems. And then you kind of zoom out and then the brother's there. Just playing with a toy or something. He's an adult. And it's that like, do you know who's in the room kind of thing?

And I think with Philemon, it's like it feels like a very intimate personal conversation. And then there's, you zoom out, there's like all these people like listening on the conversation. He addresses it to, yeah, Philem and Aristarchus, Afia, and then he says to the whole church, right? Yeah, to the church. But then he uses a bunch of singular. So it's like they, it's almost like a surgery where there's like a theater and they're watching. So they're kind of like, you know, that's factor number one, which is interesting on how we, you know, how we, how we confront people and et cetera. The other thing is there's a scholar named Peterhead. You probably know Peter. He makes the argument, which I actually find convincing. that if letters have letter carriers, it would make sense if he's sending Onesimus home that Onesmus is the letter carrier. Now, if Onesimus is the letter carrier,

then he's the one using Paul's voice to say, hey, treat this guy well. So what does it mean for Onesimus? To actually be voicing the apostolic authority of Paul. And when he says, you know, he's bringing this letter, you know, whatever, he's like, Onesimus is my own heart. He's blush. You know, there's a little bit of, you know. I think that adds some of the layers to it.

This is where context matters. People get frustrated with my book, tell her story, because I utilize a lot of context information. People get frustrated like I'm adding things to the Bible. but I wrote a blog right after publishing a story and it was called Context is not the boogeyman

because people think oh you're adding all this stuff it's the boogeyman like you're adding this thing in there that's not there that's not there you're just not aware of it like there was a context

there was a letter carrier we gotta figure out who that was because it matters and I'm sure you had to do that in your work as well it's just to me it's like we're trying to interpret the new

Testament in its historical context. Yeah. And this is, nobody disagrees with this exegetical method, right? I mean, yeah, yeah. So it's like you, you have to kind of explore what that historical context is. I think if you use a, you know, kind of, you know, speculative reconstruction that's just so specific and then use that to make the Bible say something that's clearly not, then that's, yeah, that's, yeah, I don't like anybody should be doing that, obviously.

But we have to understand the context of which it was written. I don't know. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Well, thanks, man, for being a guest on Theald Jara here in your hometown. And tell us again, your your, your forthcoming book is what? It's called Paul for the World, a grounded vision for finding meaning in this life, not just the next. Oh, I can't wait to read it, man. And you've got a podcast, right? What's it called? Yeah, it's called Hear Women and it goes with IVP's read women campaign that kicks off usually in March. So IVP approached me and a couple of other podcast hosts, potential podcast hosts. And I just love the idea because I love reading scholarship and I love reading scholarship by men and I love reading scholarship by women. And a lot of this podcast is elevating and pointing to great books, great things that women leaders are doing in the Christian world. And so the three hosts, Terabeth Leach, who's a pastor in Chicagoland, Doreena Lazo Gilmore Young, who's a writer that lives on the West Coast and myself.

And so we have some initial conversations about kind of the Christian world and men and women. But most of it is interviews with women, scholars, pastors, leaders, thinkers, influencers who are doing amazing things. So I encourage people to check it out on whatever podcast app they like. See your women. Awesome, man. Yeah. Thanks for being on the show, dude. Really appreciate it.

Thanks.