Theology in the Raw - S2: BONUS Q&A: Patreon Special (July 2023)

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey, friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. What are my thoughts on the SBC kicking out churches that have women pastors? How would I best steel man Rosaria Butterfield's critique of my book Embodied, which she thinks is dangerous? What are my go-to podcasts? What's my relationship with John MacArthur and would I ever have him on the podcast? Is social nudity always sinful? Does the Bible have an absolute minimum dress code that would cover all coaches? Folks, this is a Q&A podcast. So my Patreon supporters have sent in literally over 50 questions, most of which I'm going to address on this Q&A podcast. I'm going to address several of them here publicly. And then the rest of the episode, the full length hour and a half episode is available only to my Patreon supporters. So if you want to become one, you can go to Theologytheraw.com forward slash theology in the raw, get access to the full length Q&A podcast and many other goodies. Okay, let's dive in. What are my thoughts on the SBC kicking out churches that have women pastors? Okay.

Starting point is 00:01:07 Several caveats up front. First of all, I'm not part of the SBC. I don't know the ins and outs. I don't know how these decisions were made. I don't even know what the criteria is for becoming or retaining your membership in the SBC. So my opinion shouldn't matter very much at all, but because this was the number one voted question from my Patreon supporters.

Starting point is 00:01:31 So they submit tons of questions and then they vote on which ones they want me to address. This was the number one voted question. So I will respond to it. But yeah, big caveat upfront. I don't know the ins and outs. And I'm a big fan of not pretending like I know more than I do. I don't know how the decisions are made behind closed

Starting point is 00:01:51 doors. I don't know all the conversations that went into this decision and these kind of decisions. So I would definitely encourage you if you're interested in what happened here to ask somebody who actually knows a lot more than I do. So I guess my simple 30,000-foot response, not necessarily to this specific situation, but maybe to denominations kicking churches out in general, is that denominations should have clear criteria of what it takes to belong to a denomination. And if a church maybe used to believe, you know, one or all of those criteria, but then no longer does. And if, um, if it's required that you believe, you know, X, Y, and Z to become part of the denomination. And if a church no longer believes that, then they should, shouldn't be kicked out. They should

Starting point is 00:02:41 just leave. Right. I mean, if they're, this denomination believes this, it's required that you also believe this to be part of the denomination, and we, as in this individual church, no longer believes this, then I have no problem with that. If you're a Pentecostal church and you're part of the, well, it's Pentecostal denomination or, yeah. Anyway, if you're a Pentecostal church and all of a sudden, through much prayer and fasting, you conclude that the sign gifts, the miraculous gifts are no longer for today. That's kind of a big deal to be Pentecostal, right?

Starting point is 00:03:10 So if you no longer believe that, then you shouldn't be part of that denomination anymore. Again, I'm not quite sure if Pentecostal is the name for the denomination. Maybe Assembly of God or something like that. If you're part of the Reformed Church of America and you no longer believe in Reformed theology, and if what Reformed theology is, is clearly articulated and you say, we no longer believe this, then you probably shouldn't be part of the Reformed Church of America any longer because believing in Reformed theology is kind of a big deal to be part of the Reformed Church of America. So that's my general thought. And I'm not here to tell you where to draw those lines. I just, you know, draw your

Starting point is 00:03:51 lines as a denomination, make it clear, give biblical reasons why these are where the lines are. And then I could absolutely respect any denomination that says, hey, if a church no longer believes what it takes to be part of the denomination, then you shouldn't be part of this denomination anymore. Now, the big question, the million-dollar question is, is that what happened here? In my very brief kind of survey of a few different articles, kind of looking into this a little more, I think the rub here is that, or at least the debate, from what I see from a distance, is that the debate is that it doesn't, it didn't seem to be that clear that Saddleback and other churches, uh, they got kicked out for having women that

Starting point is 00:04:36 are called pastors. For me, it's almost from again, outside perspective, fact check me, take it with a grain of salt. It seems like the title pastor was kind of the big deal. Women could be shepherding people, but having the office slash title pastor was the kind of violation. That's a whole other conversation about function versus title. And is it really a good thing if you don't believe in women pastors, but a woman is pastoring functionally? If a woman shouldn't teach or exercise authority over men, and yet everybody knows this woman carries a lot of authority in this church, but just as long as you don't call her pastor, then we're good. I've got other thoughts about that. That's for another podcast. So yeah, going back to this, the biggest question that I see from a distance is that it didn't seem crystal clear

Starting point is 00:05:30 that this was kind of the black and white. Here's what we believe. If you no longer believe this anymore, then you're out. I think that's where some of the frustration was. In one article that I read, it might've been religious news services or some other, maybe it was an NPR. I don't know. I just, I clicked, I read the first few articles that popped up when I Googled this. So one of the criteria, criteria is plural, criterion is single. So if I say one of the, is it plural criteria or one of the criterion? I can't believe I'm blanking on this. I've read this over and over in writing books and I totally forgot the correct phrase here. I apologize to my Grammar Girl

Starting point is 00:06:13 followers. One article said that in 2014, the denomination's constitution was amended to include only churches with, quote, a faith and practice which closely identifies with, unquote, the Baptist faith and message. So I'm assuming, and I actually talked to a Southern Baptist friend about this, and he says, it's not, he said at least, it wasn't crystal clear, it's not crystal clear that the Baptist faith and message says women can't be pastors. So I'll let you go search around and Google that. But even if it did say women can't be pastors, what does it mean to closely identify with? To me, my personal opinion is that is frustratingly too vague. I would want something black and white, like to be part of the Southern Baptist Convention, your individual, your local church cannot have females that have some kind of title or office.

Starting point is 00:07:12 I would even add function as a pastor, period. If you no longer believe this, then you should not be part of the denomination anymore. If you don't leave, then we have a several month process where we end up kicking out or whatever. I went with the whole thing just really clearly laid out so that there's, there's no frustration here. Cause I mean, I honestly, if I say, say I was a church, it was complementarian and all of a sudden through study of scripture and not, you know, I said, you know what? I think women can be pastors. I, to me, I did, that would be such a yawner. Like, well, of course we have to leave this denomination. It's taught, you It's no hard feelings, whatever. We're on a different journey. And I think it should be very amicable in saying, hey, we're reading scripture differently here, but we

Starting point is 00:07:52 should have respect for each other. And it shouldn't have made the news. So from my vantage point, it doesn't seem like it was that clear that there was a clear black and white violation. Again, could be wrong if you're like, nope, they clearly violated this. They should have left. They shouldn't even had to have been kicked out. Then I will leave that for you to decide. Okay, next question. This one comes from Clark. How would I best steel man Rosario Butterfield's critique of my book Embodied, which she thinks is dangerous. And then he gives a link to a YouTube clip. Uh, that's about seven minutes long. This is on a Becca cooks, um, YouTube channel, Becca

Starting point is 00:08:34 cook. I have mad respect for Becca cook. I've had him on the podcast. I've spoken with him personally on, on, we shared the stage together. Um, and it's so, so it's Becca cooks podcast or YouTube with Rosario Butterfield and Chris Yuan. Chris Yuan. Many of you guys know Chris Yuan. Again, another guy who has just done amazing, amazing work for the kingdom of God as an amazing testimony. So I love how this question is framed. How would I best steel man her critique in my book? Because that's a phrase I often use, steel man. I want to best represent, absolutely best represent the argument and then respond to it rather than try to make it sound,

Starting point is 00:09:12 try to straw man it or make it sound weak or bring out the worst points of this argument. I want to steel man the argument. So first of all, I would highly, highly, highly encourage you, if you're interested in my thoughts on this, if you're interested in Rosario Butterfield's critique of my book, please go watch the clip. Do not rely simply on my interpretation or my analysis of the clip. I would want you to go and listen to her critique and you evaluate the critique. And I would, I mean, this is maybe a big ask, but it would make, ideally, you would read the book and then listen to the critique. I'm not really a huge fan of listening to or reading critiques of books you haven't read yet.

Starting point is 00:09:55 I'm not, I'm not, it's not sinful. I'm not totally against it. I can't say I've never not done that, but I still want to withhold my opinion on the book until I actually read the book. Imagine that. We should not judge a book based on a critique, but we should judge it based on reading the book and then wrestling with maybe how other people responded to it. I think that can be really healthy. Read the book and then say, here's my thoughts, but what are other smart people saying about this book?

Starting point is 00:10:21 And then you interact with those critiques, critical reviews that are positive, some are negative, whatever. Like, I think that that's the best case scenario. So I would highly encourage you to go do that. Do not take my summary of Rosaria's critique, uh, simply on its own, go look, go watch it for yourself. So, um, and I'm going to be honest and I'm going to try my best to steel man her critique. If I'm being honest, I'm still... Her critique came down largely in this seven minute and 40 second clip. What is it? So I forget. Seven plus minute clip.

Starting point is 00:10:58 It came down largely to me using quotation marks around the phrase, the fall, when I was discussing the question on two pages of my book, is intersex caused by the fall? Now, I do want to point out, I hope this still falls in the realm of steel, man, that this is a subsidiary point to my book. My book is not on intersex conditions, um, or the medical term is disorders or differences of, of sex development. I have a chapter on intersex, um, because intersex conditions are often, um, since we know intersex people exist, people with a disorder of sex development, and there's a range of these disorders, 16 to 20 different disorders of sex development. Most of them are very minor to the point to where

Starting point is 00:12:00 somebody, okay, sorry, a disorder of sex development is where somebody develops some kind of atypical feature in their sexual anatomy and or their sex chromosomes. Most of these disorders are very minor. They present little to no ambiguity in whether somebody is biologically male or female. There are some much more significant disorders of sex development, like androgen insensitivity syndrome. I'm getting off the rails. So yeah, intersex, most people with one of these conditions, very minor. Some people have very severe conditions. Some may even have full male and female sexual anatomy, secondary sex characteristics. So the question of whether they're a male or female can be Um, so, you know, the question of whether they're a male, male or female can be, um, much more difficult to answer.

Starting point is 00:12:47 This, it was a bit of a detour, uh, talking about intersex, but because the argument goes, since we know intersex people exist, therefore, and then there's lots of different logical deductions people make from that. Therefore, you know, therefore, uh, trans people exist. Therefore people can be born in the wrong body. Therefore, not everybody is male or female. And therefore, trans identities are legitimate. There's lots of kind of directions people go from that. And each one would bring up his own kind of philosophical and theological assumptions. So I addressed that in one chapter of the book.

Starting point is 00:13:21 And at the end of that chapter, I raised a question, is intersex caused by the fall? So this question is a distant, I mean, it didn't even need to be in the book, really. Honestly, the whole book could stand on its own without even, I think it's important to address intersex because it's so often woven into the conversation. But again, the book isn't on intersex, it's on transgender identities. The question of whether intersex is caused by the fall was almost, I almost didn't even include it. It's just that whenever you bring up intersex within five seconds, usually that's the question that comes up. So I like to, in my books, I like to address questions that I know people are going to have in their minds, even if they're not directly relevant to like

Starting point is 00:14:02 an argument that I'm making or whatever. So that's where this two-page section comes in. And on page 125 at the top of the page, I use quotation marks around the phrase, the fall. And go watch the video, Rosaria, from my vantage point. This is my steel manning of her argument. She was very passionate about these quotation marks. She seemed visibly passionate in the sense that very... Well, she said, and I quote, who does that? Who uses quotation marks around

Starting point is 00:14:32 the phrase, the fall? Because she called them scare quotes. And she later says, you only use scare quotes around something you don't actually believe in. So the problem here, if I'm interpreting Rosaria correctly, is she believes that by me putting quotation marks around the fall, that I don't believe in the fall. And she says, who does that? And she was visibly very passionate about this, what she would see as problematic. And Chris Yuan jumped in immediately and says, what Christian does that? An atheist would do that. Somebody could say, Chris Yuan just called me not a Christian. He called me an atheist. I am not saying that. I think my best reading of Chris Yuan's response and Rosaria is I am acting like doing something

Starting point is 00:15:18 that only atheists and non-Christians do, but I don't think they're making a claim about my personal salvation or beliefs in or not in a God. So that is the essence of her critique. And this is, again, I'm trying my hardest to steal my notes because that was the extent of that seven-minute conversation was really around me not believing in the fall. Now I will say the rest of that two page and now a question of whether intersex is caused by the fall, a couple of responses. Number one, I didn't use, well, three, three things. Number one, maybe this is on clarity on my part. I'm totally, I will totally own that if it's on clarity on my part. I do believe in the fall. In fact, throughout the rest of the two pages of that section, I don't use quotation marks around the phrase in the fall. In fact, throughout the rest of the two pages of that section, I don't use quotation marks around the phrase the fall. The fact that I did use quotation

Starting point is 00:16:10 marks around the fall and at the very top of page 125 was not in my heart. My intention was not to imply... To me, they weren't scare quotes. They were just simply quotes surrounding a technical phrase. Like if I talked about, what is it? I almost said like the Big Bang Theory. Put quotation marks around Big Bang or something and someone says, see, you know, you, I don't, I don't know what people are reading that. But yeah, if I remember correctly, when I, the reason why I use quotation marks was not to say, ooh, the fall, like some people believe in the fall fall. That was not at all what I was trying to say. It was more quotation marks around the technical phrase. I guess I could have used, maybe I could have italicized the phrase. Maybe that would have been better in writing. Sometimes quotation marks or italics, italic marks can convey the same thing. So the rest of the chapter, I talk about

Starting point is 00:16:58 the fall without using quotation marks. In fact, just logically, the very question, is intersex caused by the fall, sort of implies that i believe in the fall otherwise i wouldn't raise the question in the first place i would just say there is no fall so well this is a dumb question so the rest of the two pages that i wrestle with this question is assuming that there is a thing called the fall because that forms the very question that i'm wrestling with so yeah i think um you know rosaria goes on to say that, from my best understanding of Rosaria, just asking the question is problematic. We should never even ask the question. We should just assume.

Starting point is 00:17:33 Obviously, it's so obvious. I think in her mind, it'd be like asking, does two plus two equals four? Well, some people disagree. What are we doing? Why are we even raising this question? That's, I think, how she was responding to this chapter. She's perplexed that I would even ask the question, is intersex cosmic the fall?

Starting point is 00:17:53 And then Chris Yuan, you know, supportively throws in, you know, and he's a theologian, which seems to imply that I'm not just a Christian, but a theologian. Like I, I, I should not even, I should know better, you know, than to ask this question. Um, and then Rosario responded, yeah, you might say that you might say is that the theologian, I mean, my interpretation, my best interpretation is that she was being a little cynical there. Like my credentials or my, uh, track record as a theologian is, is subpar. In the chapter, I do use the phrase, um, in that two page section. Um, you know, I do use the phrase in that two-page section, you know, I do say that others, some think that intersex is caused by the fall.

Starting point is 00:18:30 Others think that intersex is part of God's original design. I don't believe this personally, but some people do say that. I think even, and Rosario jumped in and says, yeah, but they're heretics. Heretics believe transgenders are, this is a quote, sorry. So, quote, they're heretics. Heretics believe transgenders are, this is quote, sorry. So quote, they are heretics. Heretics believe transgenders are part of God's original design, unquote. Now that was from Rosaria. I wasn't even talking about transgender people or identities at that point. I'm talking specifically about intersex. I don't know why. Genuine question. I don't know why she brought in transgenders. I wouldn't use the plural transgenders.

Starting point is 00:19:10 That's kind of to my mind saying like the gays. It's just a little odd, but that's the phrase she used. That's what I'm going with. Yeah. So I think it seems that my steel man here is that it doesn't seem like, it seems like, again, raising the very question, even acknowledging that some people believe intersex is part of God's original design is problematic. Okay. She goes on to say, you know, quote, this is not a Christian book and it is not Christian theology. It is part of a new age understanding where Jesus becomes one of the names on the coexist bumper sticker.

Starting point is 00:19:48 Whenever you want to make Jesus part of a non-binary faith, that's not Jesus. You think it's good for Preston to lead others into hell bound bondage? You think it's good for our children, our churches? Is how towards the end of the quote, some questions that she raises. So that's my best steel man case of her argument against my book. She did say kind of in passing that this is one sample, because some people could say, well, why? She's not even critiquing your book. She's critiquing a quotation, the quotation marks surrounding the fall in a two page section that isn't anywhere, isn't even part of your main argument at all. It's not even what the book's

Starting point is 00:20:34 about. So my best steel man is that she's taken this as a sample and, but she believes the whole book is shot through with this kind of, with this kind of stuff. So again, read the book, make your own decisions. Definitely read the clip, watch the clip. Watch the clip a few times. I watched it a few times and I'm very confident in my audience forming an educated and gracious and truth-filled opinion

Starting point is 00:20:55 about Rosaria's critique of my book. Okay, next question. Okay, this one comes from Alex. When Paul says, I do not permit a woman, why do we not treat that similarly to when he says that about, I say it's good not to marry? Okay. So there's two phrases here. I do not permit a woman. I think he's referencing 1 Timothy 2.12. I do not permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man. Why do we not treat that the same as when he says, over a man, why do we not treat that the same as when he says, it's good not to marry? Okay.

Starting point is 00:21:36 I think if Alex, I think is suggesting or implying or questioning, you know, we take one as a command, women shouldn't teach or exercise authority over a man. We take another as a suggestion or as an opinion, it's good not to marry. Okay. So my, my quick, my quick thought here is that, um, I, I think, I think these are quite different phrases and the contexts are very different. So the context of, I do not permit a woman. Um, you know, I, I do not permit a woman feels more, I mean, it's a command, right? It's I do not permit. Like if I told my kids, I do not permit you to drive my car, that is a command. Like do not drive my car. If you do, then you're doing something wrong. The whole, you know, it's good not to marry is situated in a very different kind of context where he's not commanding people not to marry, where he is commanding people

Starting point is 00:22:26 not to permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man. So, and I know some of you are pulling your hair out right now. So a couple of things with, there's lots of debates even surrounding, I do not permit a woman to exercise authority over a man, questions about the word teach, questions about the word authority, questions about the nature of the command, not whether it's a command or not, I do not permit, but whether it is a more localized situational command, as in for you churches and Ephesus, right now, I'm not permitting a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but it's not, some would interpret this, the nature of the phrase as, but it's not, someone interpret this,

Starting point is 00:23:09 the nature of the phrase, as is, this is not some kind of universal, like thou shalt not commit adultery kind of universal transcultural command for all time of all place. So there is even a debate about this, the nature of the command in 1 Timothy 2.12, but it is a command. There's something here that do not do this. When Paul said... and monthly Zoom chats and more, then please head over to patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw to join Theology in the Raw's Patreon community. That's patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.

Theology in the Raw - S2: BONUS Q&A: Patreon Special (July 2023)

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.