Theology in the Raw - S2 Ep1025: #1025 - Q & A Podcast: Penal substitution, emotions and hell, old people having sex, and Mike Winger’s women in ministry series

Episode Date: November 14, 2022

Preston is back from sabbatical and fields a ton of questions from his Patreon supporters. All the ones listed in the title of this episode is just a sampling of the questions he addresses.If you would like to join the Theology in the Raw Patreon community, go to patreon.com/theologyintheraw and support this ministry for as little as $5/month.

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. Today is a Q&A podcast. That is the day when my Patreon supporters send in a whole slew of questions. Half of those I address on the Patreon-only podcast. The other half I'm going to address here. And my goodness, these are wide-ranging and very good and difficult questions. If you would like to become part of the Patreon-only community, you can go to patreon.com forward slash Theology on the Raw, support the show for as little as five bucks a month and get access to ask your questions on the Patreon platform. So let's dive in. First question is from Noah, who says, welcome back. Well, thank you, Noah.

So let's dive in. First question is from Noah, who says, welcome back. Well, thank you, Noah. Thoughts on the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement. And then you give a kind of the context in which you're asking this question that has to do with your passion for biblical theology. You've interacted a bit with people like Scott McKnight and him, you know, who sparred with John Piper on this question. And you've looked at sites like the Gospel Coalition, the Bible Project, and so on and so forth. And just want some, you know, guidance on this question. There's a lot of good books out there on it. In fact, Matthew, another supporter, chimed in with a recommendation to read Darren Snyder Balusek's book on the atonement. He said it's a very thorough and open-handed approach to the topic.

I know Darren. I've not read this book, but I can vouch for the likelihood, knowing Darren, that it is going to be a very thorough and I would assume very fair and scholarly analysis of atonement. So check out that book. Again, I want to be clear when I'm telling you to check out a book that I haven't read yet. I have not read that book. I do know Darren really, really liked Darren's work. So that would be one to read. There's also a four views book on the atonement that I think I'm going to mention in a, in another question that's also along the lines of the atonement. So I haven't written, well, maybe should I just find that? Let's see. It's a, it's a counterpoints book and I think it's edited. Oh yeah. The nature of the atonement for views. There's probably a longer subtitle there. I believe

it's edited by my friend, Paul Eddy, is one of the co-editors of that book. I looked at some of the authors there. Tom Schreiner's one, I think is Greg Boyd one. I forget. It's got some great authors in that multi-view book. I would also recommend a book that I have read, at least most of it, by my PhD supervisor, Dr. Simon Gatherkle, who now teaches at Cambridge University. He wrote a small book called Defending Substitution. Simon is a world-renowned scholar. He's a solid evangelical Christian, but, but, do I need to say say but or and he's also just a world-renowned scholar. Like he wanted to write a commentary on the gospel of Thomas. And so he taught himself Coptic and became over the next few years, this is back when I was studying under him, he became

kind of an expert on the gospel of Thomas, his second century-ish Gnostic work, I believe. And he wrote a commentary on it. He's been reading Greek and Latin since he was like 11 years old or something. The guy's like crazy smart. And he holds to a fairly traditional view on the atonement. But again, he's not coming at it from the angle of like, here's my denomination. I must say this, or I have to say this view or that view. He's coming at it from just a very raw scholarly perspective. And he says, no, I mean, there's really credible biblical evidence for something that we can refer to as penal substitution. And I remember that work, you know, he just goes really, really in depth on some words and how

Paul cited in the Old Testament and so on. So there's kind of the popular level debates that go on and you see some kind of like, I would say some sloppy statements on both sides of this debate. You know, the whole like penal substitution is divine child abuse kind of thing. And then you have people that respond, you know, you're a heretic. You don't believe in penal substitution. I would kind of avoid that conversation. There is some good scholarly work on both sides of the question, whether penal substitution does indeed capture an aspect of the atonement or whether it doesn't biblically capture an aspect of the atonement. I hold to a form of penal substitution. I don't know if I've ever seen it called this before, but I kind of like a covenantal version of penal substitution.

Meaning, well, I do think it's often framed in very individualistic terms, like God was mad at me, was going to punish me. So Jesus, this individual stood in my stead as an individual and paid for my individual sins. It's framed in, I think, sometimes too heavily of a legal individual, medieval kind of context. And that sort of brand of penal substitution, I think, doesn't capture the richness of how I think the Bible talks about penal substitution. When I say covenantal, I look at how the sort of storyline of scripture, which would appeal to your passion for biblical theology. You know, you have this storyline in scripture where God presents Israel with the stipulations of the covenant, namely the Mosaic law, and says, if you do these

things, you will be blessed. If you don't do these things, you will be cursed. Deuteronomy 27, 28, 29. And throughout the rest of the Old Testament, at least the historical section, you see Israel largely not doing, not living up to the demands of the covenant. And they receive, they endure the curses of the covenant. The ultimate curse, according to Deuteronomy 28, 29 and 30 will be exile. Exile is the ultimate curse. So they go into exile and they sort of return, kind of, sort of physically return after, you know, in what, 3, 5, 36, they kind of sort of rebuild the temple, but the temple is sort of kind of not occupied by the presence of God. The whole, you know,

Ezekiel, what is it? Ezekiel 8 to 10, 9 to 10, where the glory departs from the temple right before it's destroyed. That glory doesn't really return. Well, it does kind of return in Christ. It doesn't return in 516 when the temple is rebuilt. There's, you know, lights are on, but nobody's home kind of thing. So the glory does end up returning later in Jesus, but the Israelites are living in a time where they are still in exile. They are still under the curse of the covenant. And according to Jewish Christians, precisely Paul and others, Christ comes along and bears the covenant curse. This is all Galatians 3, 10 to 14, right? He bore our curse.

Specifically, he took on himself the curses of the covenant. And in the words of N.T. Wright, he exhausted those curses and opened up the door for the spirit to be poured out on Jew and Gentile alike. So that's a form of penal substitution. The curse in exile is punishment for corporate sin. And when Israel went into exile, they didn't fully, in a sense, exhaust the curses of the covenant. So Christ had to come along and bear the curse of the covenant to open up the blessing that God had promised to his people. So that's how I like to talk about the penal substitution. Christ still was a kind of punished, bore the punishment of these covenant curses. That's a little bit different of a way of talking

about penal substitution as some maybe traditional reformed, maybe more American evangelicals traditionally talk about. You know, what's interesting is I have not read NT, I've read almost everything by, well, much of, he's written more than Moses. So I've read a lot of NT Wright stuff, especially early on in his writing career. And everything I said about covenant curses and all that, that's very, that's straight out of NT Wright. I've heard that his more recent stuff, people have said, oh, he's denying penal substitution. I can't imagine N.T. Wright would say anything different than what I have kind of articulated because I got it from him and he's, I still hear him talk about the covenant in that sense. Maybe he wouldn't want

to call it penal substitution. Maybe the phrase penal substitution has too much kind of modern baggage. I don't even know. Again, I haven't read his latest work where people have said, oh, he doesn't believe in penal substitution. I would question. I think he might, if he does not adhere to penal substitution, it might be a certain kind of form of penal substitution. But I think he would very much agree with everything I said, because again, I got it from him. So he'd be disagreeing with himself if he didn't agree with what I said. So all that to say that there is some good critical work done on this question.

Don't just read some of the more popular level literature on the topic. That's a good starting place, but I think sometimes there's too much, there's just some sloppiness I see in some of that literature. Next question, Mark, you say you're a new patron and a pretty recent listener. You've enjoyed my commitment to being super open to dialogue with just about any perspective, yet also deeply committed to a proper interpretation of scripture. I've always subscribed to ECT, eternal conscious torment, that view of hell. But you are, let's see, the annihilation view of hell is biblically compelling, but you're still on the fence. Here's your main question. Clearly, we should never let emotions be the deciding factor in our view of scripture,

but do you believe our emotions can and should be brought into our interpretation of scripture? And do you think the disconnection of emotions from exegesis could be part of what has allowed ECT to dominate the theological landscape for 1500 years? This is an interesting question that I remember wrestling with early on in my journey toward the annihilation view, because I often said, I don't want emotions to get in the way of sound exegesis. And I remember hearing some thoughtful people tell me, what do you mean by that? Like, can you, are emotions always bad? And can you do interpretation without emotions? Is that

actually realistic? Are you being too modern in your thinking of slicing and dicing up human nature as if we have this kind of rational side to us that is unconnected to our emotional side? And what does that even mean? Anyway, it was a good pushback and I've now tried to nuance my view on that more. So first of all, let me say emotions play a role in both sides of the debate. Oftentimes, it's typically people who advocate for eternal conscious torment who are the ones banging the drum on, don't let your emotions affect your ex-Jesus. It's like, well, we are all as interpreters wrestling with what role emotions play in this. I mean, it's not that ECT advocates are holding their position emotionlessly.

There's kind of the, you know, I've seen kind of the tough guy emotion of like, ECT is the, you know, if you really believe in the God's sovereignty and holiness and you don't diminish his glory, his happy delight in judging people or whatever phrase you want to use, like, you know, that's the strong, if you're a real man, a real pastor leader,

you'll hold to ECT. Like that kind of posture of kind of the tough guy theology approach that involves emotions. There's also the, the fear, the, the, the emotion of fear that rejecting ECT is going to make you soft on sin, or you're kind of not taking the Bible seriously. If you don't hold to ECT is going to make you soft on sin or you're kind of not taking the Bible seriously if you don't hold to ECT. Sometimes ECT is seen as put on par with having the courage to hold to biblical authority or biblical orthodoxy. And if you even question that, now you're being soft on biblical authority. These are emotional experiences that people

have as they wrestle with this question. So please don't believe the lie that you have the emotionless, rational ECT people and everybody else who's sort of succumbing to emotions. But having said that, I mean, look, emotions simply are part of the interpretive process. We are not robots. We are integrated, complex humans. You can't neatly separate our rational thinking from our emotions. It's not like when our prefrontal cortex is working, our amygdala just shuts down. That's not how the brain works.

I'm not a neuroscientist, so I shouldn't even go here. But I mean, as far as I can tell, that's not how the brain works. I'm not a neuroscientist, so I shouldn't even go here. But I mean, as far as I can tell, that's not how the brain works. I think we need to be honest with ourselves when our emotions are dictating certain beliefs that could go against God's word. I think that's what people mean. Like, I just want this to be true and I don't really care what the Bible says. No few people are going to actually say that. But I think that that's what people mean by not letting your emotions, you know, get in the way of exegesis.

Like, you know, and then there's people that if they were honest with themselves, yeah, that's what they're doing with whatever doctrine they're wrestling with. You know, they're kind of like, I kind of want this to be true and I can't stomach this not being true. And so I'm just going to believe this and find the kind of verses that support it. But I would say that, again, most people aren't going to admit that, but that is much more common than we would like to admit. So yeah, we shouldn't do that. We shouldn't practically let the Bible take a backseat to what we want to be true because we simply can't stomach a certain biblical, a certain doctrine that we're almost scared of it being biblical. We almost don't want to look into it. It's like, what if the Bible does say God chose us and we didn't choose him? Or what if God does say that, you know, eternal conscious torment is the correct view. And it's like, and this is where, yes, I do think we should be honest with the complex interaction between our rational reasoning and our emotions as we

are interpreting the text. And that's kind of the posture I've tried to take. I've tried to, And that's kind of posture I've tried to take. I've tried to, nobody can do this perfectly, but I've tried to be aware of when I am interpreting a text and trying to find arguments to support a view that I want to be true versus trying to just look at all the data for how to interpret the text and letting the chips fall where they may. I've tried to do that, but again, you cannot completely disentangle that process from emotions. I've often said that I find, if you just want to ask about my feelings, I find the annihilation view somewhat distasteful. If you want to just go on the emotions, we'd probably all be universalists. Not that universalism is simply relying on emotions. I think there is some strong exegetical support for that, which I've talked about elsewhere. But I,

I, again, I, I do find the annihilation view to be the most responsible and compelling understanding of all of the biblical data on the final state of those who reject God, don't believe in Jesus, however you want to word that. I still think there's complexity with each view and the whole conversation is complex, but at the end of the day, I do find the annihilation view to be the best

way to make sense of the exegetical nuances of all the relevant passages. Next question, Brett. This has to do with my recent conversation with Dr. Lynn Kohik, which, man, I got. Isn't she brilliant? I love talking to Lynn Kohik. She's just remarkable. I love her posture. She's so knowledgeable, especially like the Greco-Roman context

of the New Testament. And just, I had such a delightful time talking to her on the podcast. I'm glad so many other people enjoyed that too. I got great, great feedback on that. So in her, this is Brett, my patron. In her description of Phoebe, oh, I asked Dr. Kohik,

is there evidence that the letter carrier exegeted, explained, or interpreted the letter to the Romans? And I'm actually going to get into Phoebe a little bit later on with another question where she's going to come up. But Phoebe is mentioned in Romans 16, 1 to 2. Paul commends her to the Roman church and it is often assumed that Phoebe was not only the letter carrier, but also the letter reader. And, and again, we'll get into this later, but, um, as the letter carrier slash reader, she would have been the letter performer slash interpreter, um, or at least could have served or likely would have served some kind of interpreting role with Paul's letter to the Romans,

which would at least contribute to the question of women in teaching or leadership roles. I don't think it, it's like one piece of the puzzle. It's not like we can rest too much on this because again, we are making, we're connecting some exegetical dots based on historical reconstruction, which is typical of doing exegesis. But it is a little bit. I mean, there's some ambiguity here that we're trying to wrestle with. And your question, though, is, you know, you've heard this argument before. You've heard people use this argument. But you wonder if the question itself is not somewhat problematic as it relates to modern expressions

of community. Asking that question, you say, seems to suggest that we are wondering if her role was close to the role of the teaching pastor in a modern church to equate what she did for the church at Rome to what a senior pastor or preacher is doing today in our local congregation. And so you're kind of pushing on the ecclesiological parallels that some people draw here. Is the role of the modern preacher, senior pastor, is there any precedent for this kind of thing in the early church expressions of community? So it's a great, great question, Brett, and I love where you're going with this. And let me just begin by saying, I agree that we all too quickly map modern church ecclesiological structures upon our reading of the first century church, according to the New Testament. That's very, very common.

Very, very common. It might be shocking, for instance, to hear that there's only one place in the entire Bible where a leader, let me say, let me just stick to the New Testament. One place in the New Testament where a leader of a local church in a local church context is called a pastor. Like the noun pastor, it's in Ephesians 4.11, where there's, Paul's talking about gifting in the church, prophets, apostles, pastors slash teachers or pastor teachers. It's the only time the noun pastor is applied to a Christian leader. And yet that's our kind of go-to, right? We talk about pastors, that's just our main term. We think there's pastors, people called pastors running around all over the place in the early church,

but here's the only reference. The closest thing to pastor would be elder slash overseer, which you read about in 1 Timothy 3, Titus 1 and other passages, Philippians 1.1. Even there, there's a question about the slash, overseer slash elder. Is an elder synonymous with being an overseer or are they slightly different? And what's interesting, during my sabbatical, that was the first kind of major part of this lengthy research project I'm involved in is kind of figuring out what is first century ecclesiology? What does a first century church even look like? What are these different leaders? You have elder, overseer, deacon is, you know, a debated one. They're all debated, but deacon, you know, is that a formal leadership or not? You have teachers

designated, like there's teachers in the church. You have prophets is another big one. That was another part of my research is looking at prophecy in the first century. Anyway, all that to say, yeah, I'm very sensitive to assuming that the first century church looked anything like the 21st century church. So I'm not trying to map a modern view of church onto the first century when I'm asking the question about Phoebe. And yet there is still some continuity here. According to my, like if I can reconstruct what Phoebe would have done, you know, carry the letter to the Roman church. Some scholars believe that the Roman church would have gathered at the house of Priscilla and Aquila, who were obviously fairly well off. They probably would have had a large enough house.

It's actually the only group of Christians called an ecclesia in Romans 16, even though Paul mentioned several households there. called an ecclesia in Romans 16, even though Paul mentioned several households there. So, um, a likely reconstruction is that the church in Rome was a, was a network of various house churches, Priscilla and Aquila's house church was probably a main hub. If not, you know, maybe they could have hosted the whole, well, that'd be probably too many people, even if they had a big house, but they might've had some kind of primary kind of go-to church gathering. So maybe Phoebe would have showed up at Priscilla and Aquila's house, maybe first, and would have read the letter out loud to the Roman church. And there's questions about what that even means, which again, I'll get to it in a second. So here's the continuity.

You still have leaders and teachers in the local church. Yes, the local church would have been 30 to 50 people. Yes, they would have met in a home. Yes, it would have been not somebody on the stage giving a monologue to a bunch of people listening. It would have been probably more dialogical. They might have been like sitting around in a circle. They probably would have, you know, had a lengthy meal together. They would have known each other's names and birthdays and so on. Like there would have been a strong sense of community, lots of discontinuity between the early church gathering and the modern church gathering in most contexts. Obviously we still have kind of house churches today, but yeah. So still, um, you could envision some kind of large, you know, maybe an atrium of a large house in Rome where

they would have gathered. She wouldn't have traveled during the winter time because people don't travel much during the winter. She probably would have traveled in, uh, the late spring, early spring, late spring. Um, so it would have been probably fairly nice out. Um, so he probably, they could have gathered in the atrium outside. It would have been probably fairly nice out. So they could have gathered in the atrium outside. It would have held a lot more people. She would have read the letter most likely. And let's say she performed some kind of interpretation. So here's the continuity. Here you have Paul entrusting a female with some kind of interpretive role standing in the gap between God's word. Well, and some people say, well, Paul didn't think it was God's word.

It was just a letter. Well, it still carries apostolic authority. This is a letter with apostolic authority that ends up later becoming included in the canon of God's word. So the Roman letter isn't simply some random letter. This is an authoritative communication of apostolic authority, which ends up being God's word. So you have a woman playing some kind of interpretive, one might even say authoritative role, communicating God's word to a mixed audience of men and women. Does that scenario happen today?

Well, probably not. At least it does contribute to some extent whether God is okay with and wants women to stand in that gap today, even if our ecclesiological structure is very different than what it looked like back then. So all that to say, I do think it still is a fair question to wrestle with as long as we don't neatly map our modern ecclesiology onto the first century. But I don't think it's an irrelevant question. Even if we're sensitive to all the differences, I still think it can contribute something to our understanding of the role of women in the church today. Okay, moving on. Sierra, I hope I'm pronouncing that right. Oh, you're referencing the podcast I did with my wife the other day, Chris.

We actually recorded that in August. And then because I was on sabbatical, I had all these pre-recorded podcasts that were released over the next couple of months. And this one happened to be released, I believe it was a couple of weeks ago or something. And you said that, you know, Chris says that she loves having fun and needs to have fun every day. You said you've not heard someone say this in a long time. It was refreshing. Yeah, that's, I, there's no doubt about it.

Yeah, my wife has a lot of energy and loves to, she works hard, plays hard. This is kind of how it is. So you're asking, can you comment as to what having fun with my teenagers looks like? Are we talking jokes, practical jokes, video games? And your second question has to do with seminaries that refuse to allow women in their seminary. If an MDiv isn't equivalent to pastor or leader, why refuse to educate women in these institutions is your question. And should they be compelled legally to accept women? So let me, and then Seda, another patron jumps in and gives some

great examples of what having fun with her teenagers looks like. She has kids 19 and 22. And when they were growing up, Seda says they regularly did family soccer games, football games, camping trips together. When your son was in the Clash of Clans, you joined in and got involved. Another one of your kids likes movies. And so you started to watch movies together. Yeah, I'm with Seda on this one. I think that's just being eager to kind of jump into the various things that they're into. So one of my daughters years ago got into horses. And so we became a horse family. I went out and

got me a pair of boots and built me a corral, literally built a corral, and got a couple of horses. And I realized that the horses we can afford were... You get what you pay for. So we had these kind of broken down horses. I think one was blind in the left eye and was freaked out when you walk up. Anyway, I'm pretty sure my horse ended up kicking my dog at some point. Because one time we came home and my dog was just like, just could barely walk and was wheezing.

And like, you touched the dog. He's like, what is wrong with you? And I think my horse kicked my dog. And that officially makes me a country song. But anyway. So, yeah. So, we got into horses. I even like had my daughter going to teach me how she was actually ended up teaching like horseback riding lessons. So I

had her teach me how to ride a horse, which is crazy. That's a sight to see. Another one of my daughters is he got huge into art, loves to do art, is really naturally good at like painting and drawing and just that whole side of things um so her and her and my wife actually built out of like yeah just two by fours built an art studio which we still have in our backyard um my wife my daughter built an art studio i i helped with the roof helped us from the foundation but other than that i was like you know because my my my family they get these they get these ideas like all day they'll get random ideas and in the past it was like hey we want to do this can you build it dad i'm like all right you know hey we want to do that hey can we do and after a while i'm like i gotta work here i got stuff to do so you want to art studio like i go i don't feel like you're taking my manhood away by

doing the building not me just do it i'll try to help out but i i have stuff i gotta do so they they ran with it and they did a killer job the art studio is way better than if if i would have done it so my third daughter is really in the dance and we ended up getting her a big like mirror in our basement where she can kind of do her dance routines and stuff like son cody is in the baseball and minecraft and doing trick shots and youtube and so we try to like get involved so i think just trying to enter into and encourage the things they are interested in without going over the top okay here's where parents can make the opposite go to the other extreme of just just getting a little bit too much you know like if my kids are like hey i really like the new

taylor swift album to go out and just like buy a bunch of taylor swift posters and deck out the place and you know i'm a taylor swift fan too like i think there can be that weird like parents being a little bit too you know involved but um uh yeah for us we we had we, we all like to be fairly active and outside. So yeah, a lot of camping, a lot of hiking. We wanted our kids to be into hiking early on. So we would, even from the time they were, I mean, six months, I'd throw them in the backpack and we'd go on hikes. And then from the time they could walk, we'd go on short hikes

and just try to get them into it to where it was just kind of the air we breathe. And that's how they kind of look back. Like we never decided whether we like hiking or not. It was kind of like, that's just what we woke up. We ate, we slept, we hiked. It's just part of life. And now they look back and, you know, some are into it more than others, but, um, work hard, play hard and, and, and include your kids into that and be, you know, very cognizant of what, um, what things are exciting them in life and trying to enter into that space as a parent. So your other question, I don't have a lot of... So yeah, there are schools. My seminary did not allow women to attend because the seminary was,

as the motto says, training men for ministry, and it held a very strong, clear, complementarian view. Their degree, they only had, at that time, they had one degree, it was an MDiv. Maybe they had a THM. They did have a THM, but it was, we are training men for church ministry. The MDiv is designed for church ministry. So if the school doesn't believe women should be in church for church ministry. So if the school doesn't believe women should be in church leadership ministry, then I at least think it's very consistent. I'm not saying I agree with it, but I don't. I think they should have the freedom to have that kind of view. And if, I mean, you wouldn't want to go to that place if you're a woman anyway, I mean, honestly. So many other schools you can choose to go to.

I don't, you know, should they be compelled legally? I get nervous about that phrase across the board, being compelled legally, largely because I don't trust, I have such little trust in Babylon determining what should be compelled legally or not. So, no, I think they should have the freedom to do that. And you should have the freedom to say, I don't want to go to that seminary. And great. Um, there are many, most of this, most, almost every other seminary is going to accept both, both men and women, even if they have, even if they have a kind of a strong complementarian atmosphere among, among the faculty. So, um, yeah, moving on. Um, Steve, you said you recently learned that an elderly couple, elderly couple that you thought were married

was not in fact married. They both survived their first spouse for reasons related to pension payments and benefits. They chose not to get married, but you're saying they're still living together, assuming sleeping together. When I mentioned this in my friend group, I was surprised to learn that was a fairly common thing with many friends sharing a similar story involving their elderly relatives. Based on your study, do you think remarriage is needed for elderly to live together in a committed relationship? And then Seda jumps in and says, you would love to hear my thoughts on this too.

Yeah, you had some of your two – oh, you bring up kind of immigrants who get married to people they don't intend to have intimate relationship with in order to gain legal approval for residency. So I'm going to have a quick answer here. Yeah, I'm not supportive of it. I think it cheapens marriage and waters down our credibility as we're trying to maintain a certain view of marriage and sexual ethics in a world that is becoming more disenchanted with what Christians think about this. Christian marriage, maybe I'm missing something. I guess I should always add that caveat because I'm going to come be fairly strong here. Christian marriage should never be concerned about some kind of kickbacks we get from

Babylon. Christian marriage transcends our current context that we've been exiled to. Christian marriage is not about other governmental conveniences we might get if we can just help God out by loosening up on the creator's design of what marriage is and what marriage is for. And obviously this should be obvious for some of you, it's obvious for others, you might not have thought about this. When straight people become relaxed on certain aspects of heterosexual marriage, oh, they're old. It doesn't matter. Just it's, let's not.

This sends a very loud homophobic message to the world when we don't apply the same relaxed accommodations for gay people. Being a Christian and living the radical life that Jesus called us to is not age specific. Would love to hear any blind spots I'm missing here. But I would respect it more if somebody says, yeah, you know what? We have a general view of what we believe marriage to be, but we accommodate to certain people. We accommodate to old people who don't want to get married.

They just kind of live together and sleep together. They get government kickbacks and stuff. So we, well, it's okay. And you know what? There's gay people who love each other and, okay, it doesn't really match what we believe about marriage. But they get government kickbacks if they can get married. And, okay, we're going to accommodate to that too. that to you. I can at least respect somebody who has a consistent accommodation to people who aren't living according to what we believe is right or wrong. What I don't like is when people

are selective when they say, oh, we accommodate in this area, but we don't accommodate in this area. That I think cheapens our view of marriage and sexual ethics. Next question, Chris, not long ago, I did an episode, you did an episode on ethnic reconciliation as being part of the gospel episode 992. And you made, this is you talking, you made, I made, you made a convincing case that it is part of the gospel. I have a related question about sexuality.

Do you believe a certain sexual ethic is part of the gospel or is sexuality a totally different thing? Thank you for your work. So I do think I always want to begin these kind of questions with, well, at least an acknowledgement of the vagueness of the phrase part of the gospel. part of the gospel. And when I talked about ethnic reconciliation being part of the gospel, I hope I at least acknowledge that determining what is part of the gospel can be messy. What do you mean? What do you mean by part of the gospel? So with regard to ethnic reconciliation, here's why I said, yes, I do think it's part of the gospel is for a few reasons. Number one, why I said, yes, I do think it's part of the gospel is for a few reasons. Number one, it's scripturally connected to the term gospel. Paul tells Peter, you are not walking according to

the truth of the euangelion, the gospel. When Peter separated from Gentile believers and stopped eating with them, which was undoing the very hard work of ethnic reconciliation. And Paul says, by you undoing the hard work of ethnic reconciliation. And Paul says, by you undoing the hard work of ethnic reconciliation, you are not walking according to the truth of the gospel. So it's explicitly connected to the term gospel. Ethnic reconciliation is explicitly connected to the finished work of Christ on the cross. It's one of the purposes of why he died according to Ephesians 2, 11 to 15. So that's another scriptural proof. It's connected, it's often connected to a significant aspect of Paul's missionary work among the Gentiles.

You see this again throughout Ephesians, Galatians, and elsewhere. So here's the textual, so while recognizing that the phrase part of the gospel can be kind of vague and ambiguous, here's why I, in this case with ethnic reconciliation, I'm okay using that phrase. Can we map that upon the marriage conversation? Well, we don't have the same kind of explicit tethering of marriage, specifically sex difference in marriage to the term gospel. marriage, specifically sex difference in marriage to the term gospel. We don't have it explicitly scripturally connected to the finished work of Christ in the same way that we have ethnic reconciliation connected. I'm thinking out loud here, as you can hear, because you do have,

you know, marriage as a metaphor for Christ's love and commitment and sacrifice for the church. So, so maybe Ephesians 5 actually might, might move us closer to, you know, the work of Jesus on the cross and, and marriage. But here's a few other observations. I mean, I think it is important that, well, Genesis 1 and 2 is very significant for me. It's, it's significant for some fundamental themes for a Christian worldview, right? Genesis 1 and 2, that's not widely disputed. And you have sex difference in marriage woven into the fabric of Genesis 1 and 2. It's related to creation. Jesus affirms it in Matthew 19 and Mark 10 and the parallels where he goes back to creation to talk about marriage, highlights sex difference, male and female as part of what marriage is. So this isn't just a Genesis 1 or 2 thing. It spans the covenants.

Acts 15, when the apostles got together to determine what are primary, what are secondary issues, what are some of the things that the Gentiles need to observe? Abstaining from porneia was one of those things. It doesn't seem like that's an agree to disagree issue. Porneia, fornication, which would include any sexual relationship outside of marriage, marriage being between a man and woman, is never understood as a secondary agree to disagree issue in the New Testament. Jesus has very strong words about committing porneia, teaching porneia, tolerating porneia in Revelation

2. Paul has very strong words in Ephesians 5, 1 Corinthians 6, Galatians 5, and so on. So is it a gospel issue? Again, I was like, what do you mean by that? I want to be really careful just mapping everything on that that's a gospel issue. That's not a gospel issue because the phrase is kind of vague. I think it's a significant question. I don't think the Bible treats any form of parnea as an agree to disagree secondary issue. So I don't see the disagreement over sex difference in marriage being a simple agree to disagree issue that Paul would kind of say, well, here's where I kind of land, but other people land other places or, you know, side A, side B. It's kind of like, yeah, that's, it's kind of both paths are equal for, you know, you just got to decide where you're at. Like I,

the Bible, the New Testament just doesn't treat questions of porneia with that kind of flippancy, lackadaisicalness. Those aren't the right words I'm looking for. discrepancy, lackadaisicalness. Those aren't the right words I'm looking for. With the same kind of ambiguity, maybe the best term. Questions, most questions about porneia in the New Testament are not kind of like, well, these are, you know, because like people could bring up the divorce question. Well, you have, you know, Christians on different places on divorce. So can't we tolerate Christians on different, you know, on different places on the marriage question. But divorce itself does have several passages that are, seem to say different things. Jesus says, don't get divorced. But then he says, except for parnea, Paul talks about, you know, when, when an unbeliever leaves and there's, I think, and this is, I guess, some people could say this is a subjective observation.

This is just you saying it's ambiguous when it's really not. From my vantage point, there is internal complexity, a lot more internal complexity and ambiguity when what qualifies as a biblical divorce and remarriage. I think there's more ambiguity and complexity there that would give rise to biblically committed Christians having different viewpoints, whereas there is, I'm going to say none, there's no like differences on the question

of sex difference in marriage in the New Testament. Whenever marriage is talked about, sex difference is built into it. There is no kind of like difference. There's no complexity on whether same-sex sexual relationships are porneia or not. Like whenever they are mentioned, they're always treated as not part of God's will. So, yeah. So, I don't see these as kind of like on par with each other, the complexity of divorce and complexity of marriage and same-sex sexual relationships. Other people disagree with me on that. So again, I'm always nervous using the specific phrase part of the gospel, unless I can defend

that, but I will say that a traditional view of marriage between a man and a woman is a significant theological, is theologically and ethically a significant part of the historic Christian faith, is maybe how I'dically a significant part of the historic Christian faith is maybe how I'd word it. Lauren, next question. What do you think about kids shows that feature LGBTQ plus themes or characters? And for parents who believe in the historically Christian sexual ethic, how should we handle these shows with our kids? Thank you for your work. So I'm going to come out this question from a slightly different angle, maybe, as you could probably imagine. I'm going to come at this question

with a general suspicion and disenchantment with how Hollywood handles marriage, singleness, and sexual ethics as a whole. I mean, like historically, you have the kind of like damsel in distress where the helpless woman needs a man who was, you know, she was, you know, woefully incomplete without a romantic relationship with a man. Like that's a terrible, that's not a biblical view of marriage and singleness and romance. Like, but we've been, we've been marinating our kids in this stuff for years because it was safe. It didn't have nudity.

It didn't have the devil. It didn't swear. And nice, wholesome themes like an, you know, like an idolatry of marriage and romance and a low view of singleness and a warped view of sexual attraction. I mean, they've been bathing us in really unbiblical ideologies for decades where romance is idolized. So these so-called safe kids films, you know, have been pumping our kids full of unbiblical ideology, ideologies about marriage, sex, romance, femininity, masculinity, singleness, friendship, relationships. They've been doing this for years. So I, you know, so now in 2022 or, you know, in the last decade or so, do I expect Hollywood to now integrate LGBTQ characters and films in a way that reflects a Christian or a

healthy perspective? Well, no, but that has little to do specifically with my concern with them integrating LGBTQ characters. It's my lifelong concern with how they even, you know, understand and articulate marriage, singleness, sex, and all of that. So, yeah, it's not like, wow, you guys used to be wholesome, but now you succumb to the gay agenda. Like, that's not how, which is how I hear a lot of Christians talk about it. Like, well, I used to let my kids watch Disney films, but now they have gay characters. It's like, well, you shouldn't have been watching. They're not doing anything different. They're just one more step in their really bankrupt ideology of marriage and sex and singleness. So I did talk about the pros and cons of kind of LGBTQ people in the growing acceptance

and number of LGBTQ people in pop culture. I talked about this in my book, Living in a Great World, which was directed towards teens. Um, you know, I kind of give some pros and cons. Like, I do think there's a helpfulness when I'm going to use a word here, but I need to footnote it. Um, when, when pop culture normalizes the existence of gay people, when I say normalize,

I mean to acknowledge that there are gay people out there that don't fit all the stereotypes. There's gay people who are wonderful people. There's gay people who are terrible people because there's straight people who are wonderful people and straight people who are terrible people. They're part of the fabric of society. And by erasing or ignoring that in the past, I think is not helpful because guess what? or ignoring that in the past, I think is not helpful because guess what? Gay people exist, and some of them are pretty awesome. So I think that's what I mean by normalize. But I don't mean normalize by saying that every kind of sexual relationship is ethically correct, ethically good. And again, this isn't just about gay and straight people. I'm saying this across the board.

The loads of presentations of heterosexual relationships that sometimes glorify the intrigue of having an affair, adultery. You know, The Good Wife, which my wife and I watched, was terrible. Gosh, I mean, good show, I guess. I mean, compelling, but like you almost want to go out and have an affair after watching this. Like, you know, and you have that kind of,, obviously sex outside of marriage is not even an issue. And so we've normalized all that. So yeah, let's normalize. Because it exists. Um, guess what? LGBTQ people exist too. And so by,

by including them in the fabric of society presented in pop culture and film and so on, I think it's great. I think it's great. Is it, can it be bad? Well, it can be bad in the same way that pretty much everything Hollywood says about marriage and sexual ethics is not really particularly helpful. Um, so yeah, I mean, anytime you portray, uh, in a compelling way, some kind of alternative to a Christian view of marriage and sexual ethics. Yeah. That's, we need to be on the lookout for that and be able to weed that stuff out. And obviously there's going to be some of that, a lot of that in how Hollywood portrays LGBTQ people in their films. And again, this is, again, has little to do with, oh, now they are

glorifying the gay agenda. It's like, no, we should, we should have been suspicious of Hollywood since 1920 or whenever Hollywood, I don't know. We should always have been, we just had our guard down. We, you know, we put up with years of Hollywood, you know, being misogynistic and racist and homophobic and, and, you know but we, you know, we, we let all that stuff slide. And then now we're kind of on our guard with how they're portraying LGBTQ people. So we should have always been suspicious. Next question, Aaron, if you have been attending a church for a number of years and the pastor changed their stance to be theologically affirming, would you stay at that church?

Great question. I had a knee-jerk answer to this question, and I'm still going to give my answer to it, but I want to step back and say, you know what, I want to recognize that this is an abstract 30,000-foot question that could take many different particular forms. So before I just give my answer, my thought, I want to be sensitive to some relational complexity, some ecclesiological complexity, some reasons for being in a church or not. So I don't think there's necessarily a one-size-fits-all answer to this question. I would want to understand the reason for the change. There can be layers of complexity

here. However, at the end of the day, no, I don't believe I can go to a church where the leaders openly held to an affirming position on same-sex marriage., let me put it more generally, I don't think I can go to any church that where the leaders held to what I would consider a departure from a significant aspect of historic Christian orthodoxy. And I would put the basic question of marriage in that category. If I thought it was a secondary issue, or a complex issue where it's like, ah, I can totally see where people are. Well, if I thought it was more complex, more ambiguous, then yeah, we give maybe leader's grace on that. Even if I had a strong view, I could say, kind of like divorce or women in leadership. Like I think right now, we'll see where I land up. But even now, from where I'm at in my young journey in that is the more I study

it, the more complex I do see the issues. So I can right now respect different leaders who land on different sides if they've done, you know, a good deal of the work. I can see where somebody would land on both sides. You know, there is internal scriptural tensions here that we're trying to sort out. So I'm not saying, so some people say, you know, women in leadership is a secondary issue. I don't know if I love that language. It's typically men that say secondary. Like it's not important. I think it's very important, but it's also very complex. And I think there's a lot less exegetical clarity on this question so far.

Maybe in two years I'll say, oh, it's crystal clear, you idiots for not holding to my view. There's some layers of complexity here and tensions that would caution me from having a real strong black and white view on that question. So all that to say, no, I don't think I could go to a church where the leadership held to an affirming view. Yeah. Sarah, you say you've got a few different questions here, two questions. Oh, atonement theories, questions about resources for atonement theories. Again, I'll recommend a book that I haven't read, but I know there are authors that, that, that four views book, the nature of the atonement, four views on that. I would, I think it's really healthy to read really solid representatives of different

viewpoints on, on that question. So the nature of Atonement, again, I've already recommended Simon Gathor Cole's book on defending substitution is the name of that book. Next, you're also asked a question, you know, your pastor recently recommended that you read Alyssa Childers' book, Another Gospel. You've been wrestling with a lot of what she says. I don't consider myself a progressive Christian, but she seems to argue that things like thinking Adam and Eve might not have been literal people or thinking hell means anything besides eternal conscious torment, that this will cause your whole view of the Bible as authoritative and true to unravel. Are you familiar with her work? And if you are, what are your thoughts? If you aren't, do you think the authority and truth of scripture can coexist with the interpretation of scripture like those

mentioned above? I am not familiar with, I know the name, Elisa Childers. I've not read anything about her. Somebody sent me a podcast she did where she, or maybe it was a guest she had on, was criticizing me and my work. I listened to a little bit of it. Didn't find it particularly interesting in the sense that it's like, oh yeah, you're fairly representing what I say. And I think your critiques are devastating. I'm not really familiar. I looked up her bio. I don't, it doesn't seem like she has strong like theological credentials and I'm, I don't know, not, but that's always what you need to rely on. But I'm, if don't know, not that that's always what you need to rely on, but I'm, if you're looking for medical guidance, I would say go primarily to medical

professionals. If you're looking for engineering guidance, look to people who are professional engineers. If you're looking for theological guidance, go to people who are more professional theologians, not that being a professional theologian, whatever that means, means you're correct. But the ones who are going to be probably most thoughtful have kind of hammered out their ideas in the context of other professionals. And their thoughts are typically more careful, honed in, and so on. So do I think that not believing Adam and Eve, I guess like this, like this is a good one. There's loads of evangelical Bible believing Jesus glorifying solid believers in Jesus who are Old Testament scholars who don't think Adam and Eve are two literal people. And yet they have biblical and scientific reasons for saying that. Tremper Longman, I know John Walton has his own nuanced view. These are solid evangelical Old

Testament scholars who wouldn't say, what, you don't believe that? I mean, even literal people, you don't believe in the authority of scripture anymore. That kind of theological leap to me feels sloppy. Like, you don't believe in a young earth? Well, you're not holding the authority of Scripture. You don't believe in literal six days? You don't hold the literal Adam and Eve? You don't believe the flood was global? We're dealing with some really complex exegetical questions.

Anything in Genesis 1-11 is going to be, man, these are exegetically complex. And I think, again, the thoughtful scholar is going to recognize that. They may even land hard on a certain view on that. I know people are like, no, I think Adam and Eve are literal. But I'm not going to say somebody who disagrees with me on that is sacrificing biblical authority. Obviously, I don't think if you don't believe in eternal conscious torment, your whole view of biblical authority is going to unravel. In fact, I would say the opposite. That if you believe in eternal conscious torment, I think then your view of

biblical authority might unravel. Now, see, I'm not going to swing the pendulum that far, but that's an interesting one because, again, it's because of my view of biblical authority that I'm not going to swing the pendulum that far, but that's, that's an interesting one because again, it's because of my view of biblical authority that I'm very convinced of annihilation against eternal conscious torment, which I find to be exegetically unimpressive. And I don't look, okay, that's my journey. Those of you who don't agree with that, take it with a grain of salt, do your own research. But what I don't like is when certain modern evangelical pet doctrines are just placed on par with the authority of scripture because that's what we grew up believing. Like, that's just not interesting to me, that kind of posture. So all that to say, I'm addressing your question about these doctrines of biblical authority. I am not directing that towards, who is it, Elisa Child because i have not i've not engaged her work i'm

not um but if that is what she's saying i would find myself in in disagreement with it um uh next question cameron what's up cameron you're wondering about you were at revoice and they talked about the difference between side b and side y you said you got a better understanding of side B, but you were confused with the difference between side B and side Y. You talked to the great and wonderful Greg Coles about, that's me, those are my adjectives, about him helping explain it to you. So can, you're asking, let's see, I actually would love to hear you think out loud about this a bit. Do you have any affinity to parts of side Y? So, you know, there's a great explanation of side A, side B, side Y, and side X on. A little shout out to the Life on Side B

podcast. I'm not sure if this is listed on their website or maybe it was under a certain episode, but they have a whole breakdown of these different terms that I think really do a great job to concisely explain the difference. The biggest, so side B and side Y both hold to a traditional view of marriage. Sex belongs within marriage. Marriage is between a man and a woman. marriage. Marriage is between a man and a woman. Where they disagree is on the labels or on what people might call the identity piece. Side Y, they both agree theologically on the question of marriage. Side Y would say that people who are attracted to the same sex or wrestle with same sex attraction or experience same sex temptation, this is the kind of language they're going to use,

experienced same-sex temptation, this is the kind of language they're going to use, should not use the term gay or lesbian or bisexual or trans or LGBT. Whereas Side B is comfortable with using various terminology and labels like gay, bisexual, queer, trans, and so on. And also according to the Life on Side B podcast, they would say that Side B pretty fundamentally rejects any kind of like conversion therapy or Side X, the X gay kind of narrative, where Side Y wouldn't be thrilled about it. They might not advocate for sexual orientation change efforts, but they're also, what do they say? Here's what they say.

Side Y would say, you know, efforts to change a person's sexual attractions are generally not supported, but not always denounced is how the Life on Side B podcast characterizes Side Y, which I think that seems pretty accurate. I think that seems pretty accurate. They're not, you know,

someone's like, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not into conversion therapy. No, no. But they don't seem to be as against it as maybe side B would be. And to flip it around, I think side Y might criticize side B, some people on side B, for how side B wrestles with side A in affirming theology. Side B people might say the same thing. No, no, no. No, I'm not affirming.

No, I don't find it as compelling as side B. It's kind of like sometimes they're not like, oh, heck no, I'm not affirming. Whereas side B would be, oh, heck no, I'm not into conversion therapy. And side Y would be, yeah, me neither, kind of. And side B would probably say the same thing about, no, I'm not affirming. I'm not affirming. No, not yet. No, I'm not affirming. You know, like some might not be as passionately, rhetorically passionate against affirming theology. So yeah, I mean, I would be much more, I would much more resonate with side B with some, I think, some thoughtful side Y people raise some good points. I do. Contrary to what people might think. I think having a robust conversation that's humble and curious about the utility of identity terms. I think that's a, that's a, if it's done in a healthy, humble, thoughtful way, I think there, there's some good stuff to interact,

to talk about there. Um, especially I would love to bring in some work from, uh, sociological work that is done on what identity even means. Um, Rogers Brubaker has some good stuff on this. And this has been for decades, non-religious sociologists have debated just the very meaning of identity and what role identity language plays in one's psyche, social situation, and so on. So I think sometimes this is too... I think there's potential for think sometimes this is too, I think there's potential for more thoughtful conversations to happen between side B and side Y on the question of identity terms and the utility of using those terms. But unfortunately, most people, in my experience, are not willing to have that kind of thoughtful, humble,

curious conversation with each other, unfortunately. Next question, Anne, not really a question, but a comment, hoping you might consider reviewing Mike Winger's work on women in ministry. Some of my older kids have listened to it over the past months and found it incredibly detailed. And then you also say, given how, oh, one of your kids has joked that given how in-depth Mike went on verifying sources and covering material, it left him having much less confidence in some Christian writers, given how shallow their scholarship seems to be on the issue. I have to say, I agree with him. Um, obviously looking forward to your perspective on this topic, whenever you release it. Okay. So I had somebody, I'm not familiar with Mike Winger up until maybe a few months ago, somebody else said, Hey, this guy's

a good podcaster. He's doing some great work on the question of women in ministry is how I think he worded it. And then, well, and then you asked me this question. So I've seen his name pop up and I looked and man, this dude's got a ton of followers. So Mike Winger, as far as I know, is a pastor in California. And I think he's got a ton of YouTube followers. Like I think, I want to say in the hundreds of thousands, which that's for a guy that's, and he just does like a lot of just straight up Bible teaching. And so I, okay, so here's my one big caveat, because I'm going to say some things that might, well, it will be critical, but one big caveat, I have not, I've sampled maybe,

I don't know, if you add it all up, maybe an hour's worth of material. And this guy is, you know, he's got a podcast, YouTube channel, a lot of material out there. So I've sampled a tiny portion. So take what I'm going to say with the grain of salt. I'm only going on a little bit of bio, looking at his bio, looking at who he is and everything, and then looking at, kind of listening to about an hour's worth of material. So the little bit, so the tiny, tiny minuscule that I've sampled, well, number one, I thought he was a very likable person. He's very clear. Seems to have read a lot of books on the topic, which is great.

I did. So the part that I did listen to, I wasn't, I wasn't impressed. And I'm sorry, look, I don't even know. Maybe he listens to Theology and Rob. Mike, if you're listening, I hope this is constructive. Constructive? I don't know. So the little bit I listened to was when he was talking about Phoebe, which, okay. So here's where I get into Phoebe again.

And if you're just jumping in now, then earlier on this podcast, I mentioned Phoebe and the issues with her being a letter carrier, Romans 16, 1-2. She's called a deacon. She's called a, well, there's differences, debates about the translation and implication of her being called a benefactor. Some translations say helper. And it's assumed that Phoebe carried the letter and read the letter and possibly interpreted the letter to the Roman church. I already said all this. She's a possible example of a first century female interpreter of the Book of Romans, the letter to the Roman church. So I listened to the little bit where Mike was interacting with her as the letter carrier, he kind of dismissed

the possibility of Phoebe playing some kind of interpretive role in reading the letter. And he relied on, as far as I recall, kind of some statements by N.T. Wright connecting these dots. And then Craig Keener, who a little bit more thoroughly, I believe, argued this case that as a letter carrier, she would have read the letter, she would have interpreted the letter. Ergo, we have an example of a female occupying some kind of teaching role in the first century. in the first century. And so Mike, you know, he looked up a few references that some original sources that Keener mentioned in Maccabees, one in Cicero. I'll come back to that. And kind of, I think he even said, I think he even said this quote, I think there's kind of nothing here. It sounds like, and he said, scholars just kind of making stuff up. And then he moved on. And I was like, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. All he did was look at a few egalitarian, a couple of egalitarian scholars

who make the claim on letter carrying and kind of connecting the dots, but he showed no awareness, no awareness of the ongoing and in-depth scholarly discussion on letter carrying and writing, letter writing and carrying and performing the letter in an oral ancient culture. He even used, Mike even used kind of a modern analogy. Like when I get a letter, I'm like, yeah, that's, we're talking about letter carrying and writing and reading in an oral culture, which is vastly different than anything we're doing today. And I didn't see any kind of acknowledgement that there's a, this is a whole field of study. You've got, I mean, there's loads of specialists in this area, like Jerome Murphy O'Connor and Jeffrey Wyma and Randy Richards and David Rhodes and Peter Botha, I think you

pronounce his name, Peter's article, The Verbal Art of the Pauline Letters, Rhetoric Performance and Presence is one of the many really fascinating articles explaining what it is to carry and read a letter in an oral culture. There's a whole website called Biblical Performance Criticism, I think ran by David Rhodes, who's an expert in this area. Cicero talks extensively about letter carrying and reading in the ancient world. There's other ancient authors. So the fact that he just kind of looked at a couple scholars, looked at a couple of references, he just showed no awareness of the in-depth scholarly conversation

happening around the art of letter carrying and performing. Most scholars, I mean, that's kind of old news to people who are in it, but people don't even talk about in an oral culture, you don't just read a letter, you perform it. And Cicero talks a lot about, you know, what it is to perform the letter and all the emotions and gestures. yeah they're and i wrote it in fact i posted a um unpublished piece on phoebe the letter carrier to my patreon supporters that's just like a sales pitch join patreon you'll get access to unpublished sprinkle material for good or for ill but yeah so i i did a lot of research in this and it's fascinating apart from the women and it's just, it's a really interesting area of study.

And to kind of conclude this, I think scholars are making stuff up. It just seemed really, I don't know what term to use here. I don't mean this negatively. Well, a little bit. It seemed irresponsible to say that. Now, some people, okay, so some people are going to say, well, how can you expect a pastor kind of know all this stuff? And how can he be an expert in like the art of letter carrying and whatever?

I don't. That's okay. So please hear my point. I don't expect a pastor or YouTuber to kind of know this whole area. In fact, as a non-scholarly pastor, I mean, just in scanning kind of the work he's done, I'm like, man, that's a lot more than most pastors I know. Hats off to you.

That's commendable. I don't expect busy pastors or busy YouTubers to have a good grasp on orality and letter writing in an ancient world. I don't expect them to be like well-versed in like Cicero and ancient sources talking about letter writing. Um, but I, so here's, here's, here's my point. I do, I need, I need to, like, I need to mine the depths of all these particular issues in the

conversation. I need to spend weeks in letter carrying in the ancient world, which I've done. And there's many other areas which I still need to do. So, yeah. So, I would say for the next two years of my journey, my main focus will be on the scholarship behind the scholarship in this discussion. So, here's, I thought about how I can, because I do get people recommending stuff to me. I'm like, why? You should check out'm like, you should check out this podcast. You should check out this book, this blog, this really good blog written by an elder in my church or whatever. You should learn from this.

So let me try to maybe explain. And I think this might be accurate. I don't know. explain, and this is, I think this might be accurate. I don't know. I think there's kind of like three levels of people leading the way in research in this conversation. And I would say probably any theological topic, but let me just take women in church leadership. Kind of three levels of people leading the way. There's, I want to call them group one, group two, group three. Group one are scholars who are experts in areas that are relevant for the topic, who are experts in letter carrying and letter writing in the ancient world, for instance.

To understand Phoebe, the implication of Romans 16, 1 and 2, we have to go to that whole field of study. And the experts in this area, most of them might not even be interested in the women in church question. Like they're not even thinking about that. They're just, they're classicists or atheists or historians or they're linguists or they're people who are just interested in that area of research for the sake of that area of research. Another area that I, in my sabbatical that I dug into is like prophecy in the first century. There's been an ongoing discussion about the nature, especially since most of the works that I read were probably in the late seventies. There started to be kind of this big discussion about prophecy in the first century. Is the New Testament relying on, you know,

first century? Is the New Testament relying on a more Jewish Hebrew Bible context or are they relying on more of a Greco-Roman context for prophecy? Is the New Testament doing something different? And there's people who have several lengthy monographs on prophecy in the first century. And again, some of them didn't even mention, they're not even interested in the debate about women in ministry or whatever. So I really want to figure out the thing behind the thing behind the thing. I want to look at the question of prophecy in the first century. And yes, ultimately my motivation is because you got women clearly prophesying in the New Testament. First Corinthians 5 and Acts, you have women prophets and Acts 2, you have, you you have the spirit, people who dream dreams and prophesy men and women. So the group one level of scholars are people who are experts in these various areas

of research that will ultimately be relevant for what the New Testament says about women in ministry, but they're not just focused on that. And another one that I spent a lot of time on was the Greek word authentio. It's the word translated exercise authority. In 1 Timothy 2.12, I do not permit a woman to teach or exercise authority, athenteo, over men. Well, athenteo never occurs and it's the only time it occurs in the whole entire Bible. Greek, well, the noun does occur once in the Apocrypha. And so, and the hard thing with authentio is that the verb hardly occurs outside of the New Testament, especially prior to Paul, which is important. Like in Paul's era, you only have, I think, eight references to the verb in extra biblical literature before AD 312.

And you have many more references to the noun, but even that's not very extensive. So there's a whole, I mean, goodness gracious, the sheer volume of studies that have been done on Othetio, primarily from biblical scholars, but even some classicists and etymologists. Back in the 60s, there were some several etymologists. Unfortunately, I don't think any of them wrote in English or French and German writers talking about the etymology of authentio and whether the aspect of autos, which means self, carries over into the compound word authentio. So all that to say, this is where I'm living in the deep, deep roots of this conversation. For instance, when I was in, for the three of you that are still listening,

I, so like when I was in Cambridge doing some research, I came across a bunch of references to authentest, the noun form of the verb. And it just so happens that in second century papyri, I'm not going to get in. So there's a lot of occurrences of the noun in second century papyri. And in Cambridge, there's a research center that has access to a lot of these papyri. These are like letters, like just random letters written in the first century. They're kind of been preserved and been discovered. And authentic happens to be a word that occurs throughout there. Well, there happens to be a guy at the place I was at Tyndall house, Peter Head, who's

an awesome New Testament scholar. He actually listens to this podcast. Shout out to Peter Head. I couldn't believe it. Unbelievable. Anyway, he kind of knows how to navigate papyri i don't know how to navigate papyri but he he does so he said that we spent um a chunk of a morning kind of you know looking up references and he's pointing me to where to get access to

stuff so i spent all all day really looking up a bunch of references to often tests looking at the original language of where it occurs in the papyri so that I can have a firsthand understanding of how this word is used. Turns out, wasn't much there. I looked at all these references and I'm like, man, this doesn't really, I don't think it really helps us understand how the word is used. It was kind of really mundane use of authentesk. You bored yet? I'm bored. I'm putting myself to sleep. So that's group one, this hardcore original scholarship around some of the kind of root issues that will end up playing a role in the conversation. Group two, group two are biblical scholars who have at least interacted with some of these group one specialized fields, and they have written in-depth academic books and peer-reviewed academic articles on the

topic. They may not be experts in letter carrying in the ancient world, but they have read pretty extensively in that area. Maybe they're not etymologists, but they are reading etymologists on Othanteo. They're not just going to look at what Tom Schreiner or Cynthia Westfall says about Othanteo. They're going to do some of their own original research, but even then they're relying on group one scholars. But they are going to kind of look, really dig in firsthand in the references. If I can be so bold, I would put myself in a group two kind of category. I need to be very familiar with and acquainted with group one scholarship, even though I will never be an etymologist. I will never be a group one scholar. I need to

interact with that kind of material. And I will be interacting with how other group two biblical scholars are interacting with group one. Then you have group three. These are Christians who are reading books by group two authors. They're trying to figure out what they believe. So they read Tom Schreiner, you know, they read Cynthia Westfall, they read Craig Keener, they read, um, Andreas Kossenberger, they read maybe, maybe John Piper, whatever, Grudem. Um, they're not at all looking at, um, group one scholars. Probably will never even be aware of some of those conversations.

And they're not, you know, they're not interacting with biblical group two scholars. They're just kind of, you know, relying on their scholarship to try to figure out what they believe. And this is, this sounds so pretentious. I'm trying so hard. I actually wrote a lot of notes on how to even discuss this. Cause I, I'm like, I, I, my biggest fear is to come off kind of like condescending or pretentious. That's not, I'm not putting some kind of value statement. I'm not putting some kind of value statement on, on these different groups. I'm just observing that there are different areas of expertise in any area. I mean, you can, you know, there's, there's Joe Rogan who reads a

lot on, you know, um, research into, um, the, what's it called? The virus on, on the coronavirus, right. On, on COVID, you know, he looks at vaccines, he looks at ivermectin as the smart dude. He's widely read. Right. Um, but then you have, but he's not in dude he's widely read right um but then you have but he's not in he's not in the laboratory doing the doing the research he's not performing he's not a scientist he did the first one to admit that he would even say like don't look i'm just i read a lot joe rogan would be a group three kind of person who's kind of reading and and digesting or whatever but he's not he's not he's not the guy you want to go to if you want kind of original firsthand knowledge of the efficacy of the vaccine or whatever. So I'm primarily for the next two years living in group one material while interacting with how group two scholars are interacting with group one.

I might down the road look at how group three Bible teachers are summarizing group two material. I don't, I just don't, I don't know how helpful or necessary that would be. I don't know. Is a group three Bible teacher going to say anything that I can't, that I already haven't gotten from Andreas Kostenberger, Al Walters and Tom Schreiner and, and other, you know, group two complementarian scholars or whatever, and vice versa on the egalitarian side.

That is a long response. I'm going to get, I would love your feedback on everything I said. If I said something that was totally arrogant or out of line, please, please let me know. I would love your help. Because I have, ever since people found out I'm on this research project, I get people fairly frequently saying, you should read this, you should read that.

And I'm like, I don't know if I'm going to, I don't know if that's going to be part of my for me, at least, to figure out what I think about this topic. Okay. Last question, Sue Ann. How do I respond to gay affirming Christians who claim that David and Jonathan were lovers? This is a great question. It's really interesting to me because I haven't heard this argument for a long time. Let me say this. I don't know any serious affirming scholar who would use this argument today. It used to be kind of thrown around a few decades ago, It used to be kind of thrown around a few decades ago, but I don't, it's, it's, it's just not a compelling argument for several reasons that a thoughtful affirming scholar, an affirming scholar or even just a thoughtful affirming person is not going to use this argument. Don't say, I don't, that's, you don't want to tell somebody, like, how stupid are you to even use this? Don't say that. Don't do what I do. So here's my problem with the argument. Let me just go there.

Here's my problem with the argument. First of all, I think it's really sad that it assumes that deep relational intimacy between two people of the same sex must be sexual. This speaks to our lame view of friendship and relationships and intimacy. I think it speaks loudly to how we as a culture have a very bankrupt view of intimacy and sexuality that the only kind of deep intimacy we can have is must be sexual. So if we see other people read about David and Jonathan having a deep intimate relationship, it must be sexual because we don't know how to have intimacy apart from having sex. Like I think it's a kind of a mirror. It mirrors our, I think our warped view of what intimacy even is. And it's, it's really, I mean, it's modern Western people who read David and Jonathan

and assume it must be sexual. It speaks to, I think, our sad view of what genuine intimacy looks like. All that aside. So that's kind of like, I'm like, ah, just even the assumptions that go into making the argument to me are a little sad. Like, yeah, we suck at relationships. Let's assume it's true. Let's assume David and Jonathan, they're having some

kind of broke back Masada affair. That's adultery. If they had sex, Jonathan was committing adultery. David is a married man. In fact, he's married many times. That's another conversation. He's not married to Jonathan. If David is having sex with Jonathan, then that's adultery. So even if the Bible recorded, let's assume they're having sex. This goes into the is and the ought. Just because something is recorded in scripture doesn't mean it's presented as morally something that we should moral, like morally good. Even if they're sleeping together, it would be condemned because it's adultery. The Bible certainly isn't commending the relationship as a positive example, positive proof for same-sex sexual relationships. So even if they are sleeping together, which I

don't think they are, I don't think there's evidence for that. I think that's reading modern assumptions into an ancient text where same-sex people could be very intimate. And we have this in other cultures today. So when Western people traveled to like Africa and they freak out when they see two men holding hands or whatever. Yeah. I think it's besides that, the Bible, even if it was saying they're having sex, it's not commending. So it's not positive proof in the Bible for same sex, sexual relationships. Okay, folks, thanks so much for your questions. Thanks so much for my Patreon supporters for submitting such great questions. And if you want to join the Patreon community, patreon.com

forward slash Theology on Raw. Until then, we'll see you next time on the show. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.