Theology in the Raw - S2 Ep1028: Women in Church Leadership, pt. 1: An Update from My Journey

Episode Date: November 24, 2022

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Hello, friends. Registration is now open for next year's Exiles in Babylon conference, and I cannot wait for this conference. Here's a few topics that we're going to wrestle with. The future of the church, disability in the church, multi-ethnic perspectives on American Christianity, and a conversational debate on the problem of evil and suffering. We have Eugene Cho, Elise Fitzpatrick, Matt Chandler, Michelle Sanchez, Justin Gibney, Devin Stalemar, Hardwick. The list goes on and on. Joey Dodson's going to be there. Greg Boyd and Clay Jones, they're going to be engaging in this conversational debate on the problem of evil and suffering. And of course, we have to have

Ellie Bonilla and Street Hymns back by popular demand. And Tanika Wye and Evan Wickham will be leading our multi-ethnic worship again. We're also adding a pre-conference this year. So we're going to do an in-depth scholarly conversation on the question of women in ministry featuring two scholars on each side of the issue. So Drs. Gary Brashears and Sydney Park are on the complementarian side and Drs. Cynthia Long-Westfall and Philip Payne on the egalitarian side. So March 23rd to 25th, 2023 here in Boise, Idaho. We sold out last year and we'll probably sell this year again. So if you want to come, if you want to come live, then I would register sooner than later. And you can always attend virtually if you can't make it

out to Boise in person. So all the info is at theologyintherod.com. That's theology in the Raw. My name is Preston Sprinkle, and I am going to give a sort of solo podcast today summarizing some stuff I learned on my recent sabbatical. As I think most of you will probably know, I am engaging in a lengthy research project that will end up being a book at some point on the question of women in leadership, according to the Bible. And so yeah, I got away for a couple months this fall and just did a bunch of research and writing on the topic. It was super interesting, I guess is the best word to use here. I almost said fun. It was fun.

I love to research, but more than just being fun, it was incredibly interesting. And it was just so good to have just uninterrupted research time. For those of you who are writers or write or are just engaged in some kind of like maybe a form of art, you know, as you know, it takes a while to kind of get into something. Sometimes it takes me several days to really get into the groove of uninterrupted thinking and reading and researching and writing and writing and researching and thinking. And then it's kind of get into a sort of flow, being away and being able to just go really deep in various research areas was really exciting, energizing. And man, I learned a ton and I'm only still scratching the surface. So at the end of my two-month sabbatical, I think I took... I didn't add it all up, but I think I took over 100,000 words of notes, which might be about maybe 200 pages of single-space

Word document kind of notes. I don't know if that sounds like a lot or not that much. I mean, that's probably about maybe 5% to 10% of what I'll end up completing by the time this project is over. So I made good headway, but I'm still just at the beginning stages of this journey. I ended up writing... So the way I research, I like to do a lot of just... Just do a lot of reading without taking notes. A lot of highlighting, a lot of writing in the margins, you know, books. Sometimes I keep like a catalog in the back of the book of like various themes and where people talk about certain themes that I'm interested in, in the book. And so I do, I do a lot of that upfront. And then I kind of start doing more deep dive research where I'm reading with a, you know, a book in one hand

and a computer and a Word document in another. Don't picture it like that. But you know, I'm reading with a, you know, a book in one hand and a computer and a word document in another. Don't picture it like that. But, you know, I'm reading not to just kind of blow through a book, but I'm going really slowly doing research and taking just as many notes as I can. Sometimes full page quotes, you know, or other times it's, you know, my something somebody says will jar like a thought and then I'll start, you know, just doing some, uh, thinking, uh, you know, on the, on these notes, if that makes sense. And then, um, what I also do is after I feel like I get my arms, maybe about, about 60% around a certain area, then I just, then I try to write, I want to write out all my thoughts as if I'm writing like a chapter or a short book on that topic. Now that is a very, very, very rough

draft, but it just helps me to kind of organize my thoughts around the research that I'm doing. Because if all you do is just take tons of notes, and especially if you have a document like mine, it's like 200 pages, you just kind of get lost in all the information. It gets kind of overwhelming. So I'm like, I want to step aside for a second. Let me just write like a 30-page summary of everything that I've researched in this one particular area of the larger topic. So maybe to help this make more sense, there's three main areas of research that I drilled down fairly deep on in this project over the last couple of months. One was leadership and ecclesiology in the first century church. Before we even talk about women in leadership, we need to ask what we even mean

by leadership. What was leadership like in the first century church according to the New Testament? So that was my first several weeks of focus was just looking at a side, just not even really thinking about the question about women, but just what did it mean to be a leader in the early church? What does it mean to be an elder, an overseer, pastor, teacher, deacon, prophet, and so on? And man, this is going to be something I'll probably mention several times in this podcast and throughout my journey is every time I kind of opened up a door of a certain area of study, I just found myself in a labyrinth of scholarly discussion. So even the question about like leadership in the first century church, like that's almost

like its own field of study where there's ongoing discussions and debates and people who have devoted their whole lives to researching this topic. And then I'll peek open another door of another area and I find myself in another wide world, another Narnia of a discussion, which to me was exciting. I was like, man, this is so like my learning curve was just going through the roof. I was learning all kinds of things that I didn't know about before. going through the roof. I was learning all kinds of things that I didn't know about before. Again, aside from just the question of women in leadership, there's lots of really interesting things that form lots of interesting pieces that will end up forming the bigger puzzle. So yeah, leadership and ecclesiology in the first century church was one area that I dove into.

The next one was prophecy in the New Testament. Clearly, nobody debates this. You have women prophesying in the New Testament. I say clearly, but I found an interesting quote by John Calvin, but I probably won't get to that. But anyway, yeah, 99% of all scholars recognize women are prophesying in the New Testament. We'll get to that. So what is prophecy? And that's where the debate sets in. Lots of, I mean, there's been probably, I want to say in the last 50 years, a lot of monographs written on prophecy in the New Testament. Again, not even really looking at the question of women prophets, but just kind of debating the meaning of what New Testament prophecy is. And then the third major area of research is I started kind of maybe a running commentary on 1 Timothy 2, 8 to 15,

which has that famous statement where Paul says, I am not permitting a woman to teach or exercise authority over man. And it's embedded in this really interesting, somewhat complicated passage. So I just wanted to get my arms around kind of the issues in that passage. Certainly, I did not exhaust the whole passage, but really got a better understanding of kind of what are the questions? What are the issues? What are the interpretive options? And then I also spent a little bit of time on letter carrying in the New Testament because of Phoebe, really. Phoebe in Romans 16, 1-2, it's been suggested or assumed that she was the original letter

carrier of Paul's letter to the Romans. And there's been theories on the implications of that question. So that was my focus there. There's so many other questions we have to look at. I did not even get into Ephesians 5, the meaning of kephale, head, that'll be down the road. First Corinthians 11 is a super important passage. First Corinthians 14, also just women in the New Testament. I mean, what does it mean that Jesus had, you know, women disciples sitting at his feet?

Does it mean that Jesus had women disciples sitting at his feet? What are the implications of Mary and Martha and the female apostles to the apostles? What about Junia in Romans 16? What about Priscilla and Aquila and Paul calling women co-workers and so on? So there's a lot more there that I still need to get to. And obviously, I haven't even really done much of anything on the Old Testament yet, which I will. So I've already, for those of you who haven't heard me talk about kind of my journey, I've already written the introduction to this book because I want the book to be written in real time. I do not have a preconceived position. Not only do I not have a predetermined position,

I really don't have any ecclesiological, denominational, socioeconomic reason to land on a certain view. Like I, far as I know, I won't lose any friends if I land on one side or the other, at least any real friends. I won't lose a job. I would say half the churches I speak in are egalitarian. The other half are probably complementarian on some level. There's not, I don't have likeconomic, political, denominational pressures that are nudging me or motivating me to land on one side or another. Does that mean I'm completely unbiased? Well, no, nobody's completely unbiased. I personally don't think... Well, let me just say it positively and then you can critique me. I don't have any problem listening and learning from women. Some of my favorite New Testament scholars,

biblical scholars are women. I've had women obviously on the podcast all the time. I learn a ton from women. Maybe there's some species of misogyny that haven't been unchained yet in my heart that if I sat under a woman pastor, I would just be like, ah, I don't like this. I don't think I would. I don't think I would. So I don't personally have any kind of desire for a complementarian theology to be true. At the same time, I want to follow the text, go where the text leads. And there's a decent amount of egalitarian exegetical arguments that I just haven't found that impressive. You know, if God has ordained men to be leaders in the church and he's revealed that to us in scripture, then we need to submit to that and embrace it and celebrate it. And I'm more than happy to do that if that's where the exegesis lands us. And I know good godly people, men and women on the complementarian side who make really good arguments for their case.

So that's kind of where I'm at. And I'm writing this book in real time. So like I said, I've already written the introduction from the perspective of here's the questions I have in my mind. I don't even know whether the rest of this book is going to end up. So you're going to read the first chapter. And yeah, you're going to see me kind of back in time where my conclusion will end up giving some answer, hopefully. And yet the first chapter is going to be capturing my real time, like not knowing where I'm going to end up landing. So the book is more of a journey.

It's going to be a long, it's a long project. It probably won't be out. I'm giving myself about three years of research that could, depending on how much, you know, chunks of time I get done on this book during those three years. It could be shorter, it could be a little longer, who knows. Um, but I just want to make sure it's, I've exhausted as much research is as, as I can possibly do so that I have a thoughtful answer. You know, I, people, when I came back from my sabbatical, people like people ask me, Oh, did you finish your book? I'm like, dude, I scratched the surface. I'm just getting started here, even though I have done a decent amount of research now. I feel like

I made good headway. There's still so much more to be done. I'm also writing two other books before this book. One that I'm just finishing the edits on is called Does the Bible Support Same-Sex Marriage? 21 Conversations from a Historically Christian Point of View. It's just a kind of a shorter book responding to all the top affirming arguments. And then I'm also beginning to work on a second book that has to do... The tentative title is Exile, subtitle, A Christian Political Identity, which is, I call it my politics book, but it's not going to really focus on contemporary politics. It's kind of like a biblical theology of what does the Bible say about how the people of God are to view themselves in relation to the empires that they find themselves under? The Bible says a ton about this. And so I kind

of want to dive into kind of a sweep of what the Bible says about a Christian or a people of God, if you will, political identity. There's so much there. And this is going to be kind of a book that's been in the back of my mind for a decade at least. And I'm trying to pull all the pieces together and put everything on paper, kind of give like a biblical support for a lot of these kind of things I say offhanded. And when I give talks on the podcast, when I tweet or whatever, I want to try to put it all together and give some theological foundation to kind of my perspective on how Christians should view themselves against or in relationship with the empires of today.

Oh, man, I have so much to talk about. I went through all of my notes again, or not my notes, my kind of summary chapters of 50,000 words that I wrote down. And I kind of said, man, how am I going to summarize this on the podcast? So I'm going to have all these documents open. I'm going to try to just kind of summarize some of my findings. And I might be doing some reading here. And I've got a lot of...

I don't want this podcast to be too long, but I do want to give you an overview. I make these asks me like, hey, where are you at? What did you discover? What did you find? And so I do want to give you an overview. I make it's asking me like, hey, where do you at? What did you discover? What did you find? And so I do want to give you some of that. So let's dive into leaders in the early church, leadership in the early church. I guess the one obvious point we should note is that when we look at early church leadership, we simply cannot take our modern day view of church and map it upon the New Testament.

view of church and map it upon the New Testament. The New Testament gatherings looked very different than the overwhelming majority of churches, church gatherings today. That's not to say church gatherings today are wrong. I'm just saying that they're different. The New Testament church was in a very different social environment than today. It was a lot, lot smaller as I'm sure most of you guys know. I mean, they met in, typically they met in homes of wealthier Christians that could fit maybe anywhere from 20 to 50 people in their home and maybe more. I mean, Gaius seems to have in Romans 16, 23, a very large house that they can host the whole church or the whole city. It seems like a hundred at max, max hundred. I mean, that, that's really pushing. I would say 20 to 50, you know,

when we go to church, we typically go show up, there's a worship set on stage, pastor comes up, gives a monologue, another worship set. And then we kind of shuffle off. Uh, that, that's not like, we cannot map that image on the first century. Even the thing like even the church offices we have today, pastor, executive pastor, the elder board, deacons and stuff, just because we use the term elder today doesn't mean that the function of modern day elders is the same as what Paul was talking about and Peter was talking about when they talked about elders. So I really want to just try to set aside our modern day image of church and church leadership and pastors and teachers and so on, and really try to unearth what a first century ecclesiology would have looked like.

Let me start here. And again, there's so much scholarly literature on first century leadership. It's been going on. This discussion has been going on for 100 years in the scholarly world. So there's a lot of literature here, which is really exciting to work through. And I'll mention some names throughout that I found really helpful. One of the things that was most striking to me and something that some people brought out, but other people didn't. This might be, let me just jump right into it. I think this might be one of the more significant

themes in my book. Something that I think needs to be highlighted. And that is this theme of reversal in the kingdom of God that applies to leadership. Let me read some stuff here that I wrote down. Jesus stepped into a world profoundly concerned with honor and status. And this is true both of Judaism and the greater Greco-Roman world. Even if there are some differences in how each culture conceived of honor, both were honor-shamed cultures or once family lineage, family lineage, vocation, sex, age, economic status, civic reputation, including certain titles you might hold in your civic kind of status and several other things contributed to how much honor you might have among others in your community. And I talk about the, for example, the patron client system, which some of you might know about. I'm not going to get into the details there.

Another example is the so-called race for honors, the cursus honorum, where people of all statuses had access to different kind of honorific titles that they would hold, and that would give them great honor in the eyes of others. This was a significant part of the fabric of the Greco-Roman world. So one of the most jarring countercultural threads woven throughout the New Testament is this theme of reversal when it comes to status and honor. We see this all throughout the Bible, really, but it just explodes into view with the life and teaching of Christ. Christ announced the theme of reversal as an integral value in his kingdom. Many who are first will be last, and last will be first. We all know this statement. That would have been so bizarre in a Greco-Roman, or in this sense, a Jewish context.

But, you know, the Gospels are written to people steeped in, or some people at least steeped in a Greco-Roman context. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled. Whoever humbles himself shall be exalted. When the disciples were arguing over who would be greatest in the kingdom, which would have been a very natural thing for people in the first century to wonder, kingdom, which would have been a very natural thing for people in the first century to wonder. Jesus turned a whole paradigm of leadership and authority on its head. One of the most significant passages here, repeated in all three gospels is, I'll go to the Matthew 20, Matthew 20, 25 to 28 retelling. Jesus called to himself and said, you know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them and their great men exercise authority over men.

It is not this way among you, but whoever wishes to be great among you shall be your servant, diakonos. And whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave, doulos. Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many. And the parallel in Luke 22, 22 verses 25 to 27 adds benefactors here. But this is a significant countercultural thing that Jesus is doing here, turning this quest for honor and status and titles and leadership, turning it on its head. This passage in Matthew 20 is extra relevant for our purposes because Jesus is speaking directly about leadership in the

kingdom of God, that a leader should be considered a slave is one of the more revolutionary things Jesus ever said in the gospels. And Jesus drove this point home quite literally when he took the form of a slave. I'm taking that phrase from Philippians 2, but Paul's probably thinking about John 13, where Jesus took the form of a slave to wash the feet of the disciples. This was not just some random humble gesture on the part of Christ, but was a radical reversal of what it means to be, quote, teacher and Lord. John 13 verses 13 to 14. So Jesus turned the status and nature of leadership on its head and the New Testament writers adopted Jesus's pattern when they discussed leadership in the church. This comes up in several places in Paul's letter, in particular, and I don't want to read this whole section, but

1 Corinthians 1-4. The first four chapters of 1 Corinthians, Paul seems to be fighting to establish a kingdom view of leadership among the Corinthians who are still stuck in a more secular view of leadership. And this is the work of Andrew Clark, Dr. Andrew Clark from Aberdeen University. So when I studied at Aberdeen, I studied under Simon Cathercole, but Andrew Clark was another professor there, and he has spent the last, I want to say 25 plus years, focusing on leadership in the first century church. This is what I mean. Like this is a, this isn't some like, oh, you read an article and you get it. Like this is a field of study, trying to understand leadership in the first century church. And I believe this is his Cambridge PhD dissertation, I believe, where he, it's called like secular and Christian

leadership. And he focused on first Corinthians one to four. He's written several other great books on leadership in the first century in the church and the New Testament. So I draw a lot on Andrew Clark. I mean, he is a wonderful man of God and a man of the church, amazing scholar, well-versed in all the Greco-Roman stuff. And I've actually been, and it's funny because when I was studying at Aberdeen, I remember him talking about leadership, leadership this, leadership that in the church. And I thought it was kind of a boring topic. I was into like Paul and the law and understanding salvation and these grand theological themes in the New Testament. He was looking at leadership.

I was like, how boring. And now I'm like the opposite. I'm like, Paul in the Law sounds really boring to me. And I was like, oh my gosh, I missed an opportunity to really get with Andrew and learn what I'm now diving into. So I've been in touch with Andrew. We've been having some great email exchanges as I'm reading his stuff and trying to say like, well, what about this?

What about that? And if this is true, then what about this? And trying to tease out some of the stuff he's written on. Anyway, yeah, I don't want to go into detail. Let me just state this as a pretty well-established fact that a lot of stuff Paul is battling against in 1 Corinthians 1-4 has to do with a very secular view of status and honor. It seems that, this is something Andrew points out, that it seems that even the people saying, I'm of Paul, I'm of Apollos, I'm of Christ, I'm of Cephas,

that they're almost reflecting this kind of patron-client system that these people were like, I'm a client of Paul, I'm a client of Apollos. And the patron-client system was very, very hierarchical. And Paul just wants to pull the rug out from underneath that view of leadership. And this is the passage like in 1 Corinthians 4 where he even like really downplays his apostolic status. We are the scum of the earth. We're like the stuff that people scrape off the bottom of their sandals. Like he just like really goes out of his way to say we are nothing. We're nothing but servants and slaves.

So even as apostles, don't view us in this kind of high honorable position. So he, the whole first four chapters of Corinthians is just overturning this secular hierarchical view of leadership on its head. Paul does not cite as legitimation of his position of leadership, his own secular status or credentials. Indeed, as part of this discussion, he adopts a number of techniques which explicitly invert the significance of social status. And I go into detail, kind of giving evidence there. Another letter where Paul does this is the Philippian letter. I'm not going to go into great detail here. Joe Hellerman has done some really interesting stuff on the implications of what Paul says in Philippians, in particular chapter two, the Christ hymn in two, five to 11, and Paul's own credentials in chapter

three. Paul seems to be doing very similar things here as he does in first Corinthians and just taking a very secular view of status and honor and titles and turning it on its head. And he goes to Christ as the ultimate example of somebody who did this. And lots of interesting stuff here. I'm just scanning my notes here. So here's the thing, just going back to kind of my nature of how I'm researching this project. I would say the final book that comes out will probably contain about 10% of all my research and stuff. of like all my research and stuff. I mean, I'm just looking at some of the,

you know, I spend maybe 10 pages going into detail in some of this stuff. But what I might end up doing, because I don't want the book to be overly academic. I want it to be readable. I don't want it to be too long. Maybe 300 pages. That's pretty long.

What I might end up doing throughout my journey, or at least toward the end, is posting more academic kind of summaries or overviews of my research in kind of readable, almost like a polished chapter that I'll post maybe online to where I might spend a few paragraphs summarizing something in my book where I spend 15 pages kind of showing all the evidence. Because if I... I mean, think about it. I probably covered 10% of this discussion so far in rough draft form. I'm already 50,000 pages

into it. So I don't want to write a 900-page book. But I would want to make this kind of the research available. And I do want people to see if I'm kind of saying, summarizing, here's how this word is used. I want to give public evidence of why I'm drawing that conclusion. Anyway, so I'm just glancing through all this stuff. I'm like, man, this is way more than I think most people want to read. Most people, at least. Let me go back to kind of some stuff I wrote here. This theme of reversal, where leaders in the Christian church are not viewed as in positions of power. They're not viewed as positions of privilege, honor, status. This must frame our questions about women in leadership. We cannot wrestle with these questions through the lens of a hierarchical view of leadership, where leaders are considered more

powerful, more important, more prestigious than non-leaders. And therefore, if a woman is excluded from leadership, this means that they're considered less powerful, less important, more prestigious than non-leaders. And therefore, if a woman is excluded from leadership, this means that they're considered less powerful, less important, less prestigious than male leaders. Might need to reverse 15 seconds and hear that again because this is super important. And if I'm missing something, I would love your feedback. Where can you get feedback?

People are like, yeah, I'd love to give you feedback. I got feedback for you all the time. I don't know how to get hold of you. I want to figure out a platform where I can start posting this stuff and I can have people kind of comment, you know, give some thoughts. What I don't want, I don't want 300 emails tomorrow. I just can't work through that. But, um, and this isn't a plug, but my, my, this is going to sound, it's going to sound so, I'm not going to say it. I'm not going to say it. I'm going to figure out a way for y'all to, or some of y'all, to give some feedback on what I'm saying here. Because I really would love to know what are some really thoughtful people who are wrestling

with the same question. What are some of your thoughts on this? A Christian view of leadership does not allow for this kind of hierarchy between leaders and non-leaders. And to rightly approach the question of women in leadership, we have to bring with us a truly Christian rather than secular view of what leadership even means. And to be honest, okay, here we go. I do find some egalitarian views of leadership in general to feel more secular than Christian. than Christian. Interview of leadership that talks about leaders as people with a higher status, more power and privilege, more honor, more significance than non-leaders reflects

the values of a right side up kingdom of Rome or America rather than the upside down kingdom values of Christ. Let me give you some examples. I'm not going to name names here, but I do have actual quotes. One egalitarian writer considers non-leadership positions to be, quote, secondary roles in the church. And when historical cases of female leadership are covered up, then women are recast as, quote, as less significant than they really were. Those statements seem to reflect a very secular view of leadership versus non-leadership that Jesus turned on its head. This author goes on to say that complementarian theology is, quote, a blind pursuit to maintain control over women. That only makes sense if being in leadership is a position where you maintain control over non-leaders. Is that what

New Testament leadership is supposed to be? Now, one could argue, well, no, it's not supposed to be that, but it is. Well, yeah, I got nothing. Sure. Yeah, I agree with that. I am not really looking at aberrations, contemporary aberrations of what the New Testament envisions leadership to be. I'll fully agree that, I mean, I don't think this is only in commentarian circles. This is probably just in human church circles where the view of leadership is hierarchical, does try to maintain control over the people that are leading, does see itself as a position of power and privilege and status and honor. I'm saying that's wrong. That's a departure. But before we even get into the women question, that needs to be rectified. So I'm not really interested in modern aberrations of the New

Testament vision of leadership. I want to look at what the New Testament itself says about leadership. What is the paradigm set before us? So these statements that I just read, you know, only make sense within a secular leader-non-leader hierarchical framework where leaders as a category are more significant than non-leaders since they fulfill primary roles in the church to maintain control over non-leaders. This same author goes on to question, this author frames the question about Junia's apostleship, Romans 16, 7, Junia is probably called an apostle in a similar hierarchical way. Either Junia is, quote, a prominent apostle, unquote, or she's, quote, simply a noteworthy woman, unquote. This implies that there's a significant status difference

between apostles and non-apostles. Like, would Paul say that in 1 Corinthians 1-4? Does that reflect how he views apostleship? Like, I'm a prominent apostle. You're simply a normal, average, everyday Christian. That's exactly not what he does. He actually does the opposite. He downplays the status and honor of being an apostle.

So the whole idea of, oh, you're not an apostle. You're simply a noteworthy woman. I don't think that, I think that's, again, playing on secular categories. I think that's, again, playing on secular categories. Another complementarian author believes that complementarians advocate for, quote, a hierarchical relationship of male and female, while egalitarians believe in, quote, gender equality. But again, this, and again, I'm, yeah, I know people, I've heard of people, I know people who probably wouldn't agree with that. Yeah. Men are leaders, women aren't, and men are, it's hierarchical. Men are superior. Men are maintaining control over all the non-leaders.

Like they might have that view. New Testament doesn't have that view of leadership versus non-leadership. This author says, the relationship of male and female continues to be perceived in hierarchical ways. God created men to lead, women to follow. It is this that fundamentally differentiates a traditionalist from egalitarian today. Again, I don't think we can approach the question bringing this hierarchical view to play. There are people who do highlight the significance of this, but I am kind of shocked at how people just enter into the discussion of women in leadership without, I think, taking as seriously the New Testament view of leadership as a whole and how countercultural it was. And I see this reflected in the language all the time, specifically among, or typically among some egalitarian writers and scholars. There's been, let's see, there's one

highly neglected work that's just a robust piece of scholarship by a female complementarian, Sidney Park's PhD dissertation. I studied with Sydney Park. Sydney, I believe, studied under Andrew Clark or Frances Watson, one of the two, at Aberdeen. She was ahead of me, but she, yeah, brilliant New Testament scholar who is complementarian,

and she did her whole PhD dissertation on Philippians 2 and the kind of inversion of the hierarchy. I forget the name of her book. I haven't. I've been reading. I read like two-thirds of it so far. I need to finish it. And it's just a brilliant piece of scholarly work and I think is very significant for the conversation. Oh, another scholar, Michelle Lee Barnwell, neither complementarian nor egalitarian is the title of her book, I believe. She's going to be on the podcast here in a little bit. Also has a whole chapter kind of talking about the significance of this inversion of hierarchy as it applies to leadership in the New Testament and why that's significant for this conversation. She does a great, great job with that.

But it's – so there's people that do kind of highlight it, but it's rarer than I would like to see. Got a lot to cover, and I haven't even gotten into some of the more leadership terms. So let me dive into what I discover with leadership in the New Testament. And I did a decent amount of research on the individual terms elder, overseer, pastor, teacher, and deacon. There's a question about how we should even treat the various passages in the New Testament that talk about leadership. Some people kind of treat it as monolithic, like we can take statements from Corinthians and the pastorals and Philippians and piece it all together. And here is the New Testament view of leadership. That would be kind of the default assumption for a lot of people kind of going into this

conversation. Then there's a more of a development view that Paul started out working with churches that were more kind of democratically led, like in Corinthians where it's kind of, everybody's just kind of chiming in. You don't see elders or, or L overseers or pastors mentioned in Corinthians, but then you get to the pastorals,

you know, a couple of decades later and Paul's like, all right, we need to, we need to hone in these charismatics here and provide some structure. And so you have the pastorals providing a much more, some would say like a hierarchical view of leadership. Because Paul's like, ah, Jesus isn't coming back anytime soon. We're in this for long haul.

We need to have some structure here because these tongue speakers are getting out of control and so on. So the kind of a developmental view of leadership. And then you have people who would say, well, I don't think there kind of a developmental view of leadership. And then you have people who would say, well, I don't think there's necessarily a developmental view, just there's no one size fits all model of leadership for individual congregations. So we can't take what Corinthians says about leadership and say, that's true. That should be true of all churches. We can't take what the pastorals say about churches and say, that's true of all churches. I don't know where I would land on that. I kind of am sympathetic to that third view that I don't think we can just quickly assume that

how Paul conceives of leadership in individual churches should be taken as kind of like universalized for all churches. But yeah, I want to think through that a little more. And I don't think that affects. Some people are like, no, we believe in inerrancy or whatever. Like all of us, Paul has to have the same kind of view of leadership. I don't, I think that's not, we shouldn't deduce that just because scripture is authoritative. Therefore, every church must have the same exact model of leadership.

So that therefore, I'm not impressed with it. So yeah, but that's a question we should keep in mind. Like, do we take these individual books that Paul's writing, or even we can add, you know, Hebrews talks about leadership. 1 Peter 5 talks about leadership. Actually, the whole letter has implications for leadership, but especially 1 Peter 5. Ephesians has implications, talks about leaders,

prophets and apostles and pastor teachers. At least it's something, talks about leaders, prophets, and apostles, and pastor teachers. At least it's something, a question we should keep in mind. In terms of the terms, in terms of the terms, as far as the terms go, early church leaders are described by many different terms, apostles, elders, overseers, pastors, teachers, and other terms whose leadership role is more disputed. Deacon and prophet, those are a little more disputed, what they mean. Okay, here's an important thing. One of those striking things about Paul's leadership language disputed. Deacon and prophet, those are a little more disputed, what they mean. Okay, here's an important thing. One of those striking things about Paul's leadership language is not the terms he used, but the terms he didn't use. Common Greek words for leaders in the Greco-Roman world were archon, hegemon, stratagos, prostatus, all of which were used in, quote, military, civic, imperial,

and other contexts alongside titles for military, civic, priestly, or collegial offices. And it's likely that Paul's avoidance of these common terms was intentional in light of our theme of reversal. The Greco-Roman world was preoccupied with honorary and official titles across all levels, civic and imperial and political and religious. Given how tied up these common leadership terms were with honor and status, and given how much that such honor and status were turned upside down in the wake of Christ, it seems likely that Paul reached out for a fresh batch of terms to describe leadership in God's upside down kingdom, ones that were clear and recognizable, but that didn't come with a lot of the secular

baggage of status and honor. And just to hang my hat on something here, I wonder, and this is something I have yet to see anybody say, oddly enough, I wonder if what I just said there in the last paragraph will help. I wonder if this might help us understand Paul's use of authentio in 1 Timothy 2. That's the word translated exercise authority over man. That's a huge word in this debate. And people have been writing article after article after article defending their view on what authentio means. And I wonder, if I come back to this, I missed it because I need to come back to this, but just to kind of state it now, what if authenteo, Paul's problem with women exercising authenteo over men is not simply that

that is raw, godly, upside-down servant leadership, but what if Othenteo captured a more secular view of leadership so that when we look at parallels of Othenteo in the wider secular literature, we can find statements that don't seem too negative, but given the context of how that word is used, But given the context of how that word is used, the whole top-down nature of how authentio is used, that's the problem that Paul has with the word. This is going to make sense to maybe about seven of you who maybe have looked at authentio and kind of follow me here. I didn't want to get in the weeds there.

I'll come back to that, maybe unpack that a little bit later if we have time. But yeah, I do think that there, I think Paul is going out of his way to, again, I've kind of already said this, but to establish a more Christian view of leadership rather than a secular view. Elder, I did a bunch of read, there's been books written on what it means to be an elder. One of the, probably the most comprehensive book is by R.A. Campbell called The Elders. Great book, really good book. There's been other books written. That one's kind of seen as fairly definitive. I go into what elders do.

There's kind of three main descriptions of what it means to eld. They shepherd the flock. Acts 20, 1 Peter 5, they care for people, protecting the flock against false teaching. They managed a church, preistemi is a word used in 1 Timothy 5, 1 Timothy 3. It's also used in Romans 12, 1 Thessalonians 5, 12. Managing, kind of overseeing. One of the questions that comes up is, is elder a synonym for overseer? So in 1 Timothy 3, if anybody desires to be an

overseer, it's a fine work he desires to do or however it's worded there. And so Paul lists qualifications for overseer in 1 Timothy 3, but then in Titus one, he says qualifications for elders, but then a few verses later, he calls them overseers. And I believe, let's see, you also have a correlation in both acts 20 where overseer and elder are used. Oh yeah. Paul calls for the elders in Acts 20 verse 17. And then he calls them overseers. Acts 20, 28. First Peter 5, likewise, could be using elder and overseer or overseeing the verb interchangeably.

Elders are called good leaders or leaders who work hard at preaching and teaching. Or maybe a subset of elders who do that in 1 Timothy 5, 17. So they could be an elder and overseer could be synonymous or an overseer could be a select group of elders. This is the view of Andrew Clark, who says, you know, in any given city, you had kind of a group, you know, elders who were older, more mature Christians. Maybe they had already, you know, were kind of looked upon as being leaders in the community. Maybe they had civic leadership position, or at least, you know, in the village, the tribe, in their community, they were viewed as leaders and mature. And then when they get saved, they kind of already have that kind of, they were already kind of functioning as elders. It wasn't necessarily like an official title for an office,

although some people do hold to that view, but in any kind of, in many cultures, you just have elders of the community. And so this term kind of borrows from that very common socioeconomic, socio, just social way of referring to leaders in any given community. And Andrew Clark says that you had elders who were just, let's just say, of the several house churches that existed in Rome. There's been estimates anywhere from like three to seven, I think, of different individual house churches there. You had elders who were just the older, mature people among those

in the congregations, but then the overseer might be the individual leader over individual house churches so that when Paul's appointing overseers, he is looking at the group of elders and selecting individuals who would be overseers over individual house churches. Now, this is not crystal clear. No one says it is. We're just trying to make sense of why Paul uses these different terms and how these different terms are functioning. I don't think for our question of women in leadership, it's necessary to sort all this out. Clearly, elder, overseer, or elder slash overseer are leaders in the church who not every teacher is an elder, but every elder is supposed to be able to teach. This episode is sponsored by One Million Home, an awesome organization dedicated to winning the battle to get orphaned kids home.

Did you know that there are 5.4 million kids in orphanages worldwide? Did you also know that the majority of those kids, given the right support, could actually return to their parents or other family members? In the face of family separation throughout the world, God is setting the lonely into their families. And One Million Home is doing an amazing job creating pathways to reunify kids with their families throughout the world. You might remember that I had Brandon Stiver on the show from One Million Home a few podcasts ago. It was episode 989. And I was so blown away at the amazing work that he and One Million Home are doing. So we are inviting Theology in Raw listeners, the Theology

in Raw community to join the movement of family reunification for Giving Tuesday this year. That's November 29th. It's coming up. It only costs $250 to reunite a kid with their family. So that's what your Giving Tuesday gift will be going to. So if you have a heart for orphans, and if you're a Christian, you kind of should, and you want to contribute to more effective and biblical ways of caring for orphans, then go to 1millionhome.com forward slash T-I-T-R. That's the number one, the millionhomenospaces.com. Here's the one argument that I'm not sure about. Some people say, well, clearly you have women who are the head of households in the New Testament.

In particular, there's four that we know about. Mary, Chloe, Lydia, and Nympha. I think Mary is, what's that, Acts 12, Chloe, 1 Corinthians 1, Lydia in Acts 16, and Nympha, I believe, I want to say Nympha is Colossians 4, I think. Since it's often assumed that the overseer would have been the head of a house where the church met, and since we have at least some female heads of house churches or churches that met in homes, there's a strong case, according to some, to be made that at least some women in the New Testament occupy the role of overseer over the church that met in their home. Brian Capper, a scholar who has a good article on

this called Apostles, Households, and so on. I forgot the whole title. He says that prominent converts who offer their households as the meeting places of the churches and held authority in those gatherings in view of their seniority in the faith and their natural authority as hosts or the meetings, which included the Christian meal held in their homes. Wait, I didn't, my cadence was wrong there. Prominent converts from, oh, I think I need to, my grammar is off here. I might have misquoted him, but yeah. So people that were already heads of households, they get converted, they host a church, and they would have been the natural authority over that gathering because that's just how

it worked in that culture. The head of the household was responsible for what was going on in that household. Linda Bellevue, a egalitarian writer, says, this is why, quote, Paul places great emphasis on a person's track record as a family leader, as it is a definite indicator of church leadership potential. 1 Timothy 3, 4-5, and 5-14. In terms of being a host, Bellevue points out that, quote, homeowners in the Greco-Roman times were in charge of all the groups that met under their roof.

This was essential since they were legally responsible for the group's behavior. And she points out that we see this in Acts 17, verse 7, where Jason is responsible for the people he is hosting. This view. So here's my thought. So this is kind of a question that I still have. I'm still working out my thoughts on this. It does make sense in light of the social context of early Christianity. And in the research I did, I'm like, no, this, okay, I can see where this would have been common in the Greco-Roman world.

The head of the household would be, have kind of a natural authority over whoever's in their household. And we see examples of this when it comes to male heads of households, Crispus, 1 Corinthians 1.15. Example of somebody not just being a head of the household, but kind of having some kind of authority because of that status. Certainly, these examples and others do match what we see in the social environment of the first century, where heads of households who hosted gatherings would be the de facto overseers of that gatherings. However, got a lot of howevers in my Word documents here. I do have some challenge, I guess some questions slash challenges to this view. Again, maybe it's true. Maybe at the end of the day, I'll say, no, this argument's solid.

And this would be one argument for women being an elder overseer of the household, the church that meets in their house. But here's some questions or challenges. First, it does assume that everything we know about male heads of households in the first century would naturally apply to female hosts. And here I can hear some people saying, oh, you misogynistic son of a... Hold on. I'm not saying like, oh, I'm fine with men doing it, but I don't know about women. I'm trying to say in the first century, in the Greco-Roman environment, given everything we know I'm trying to say in the first century, in the Greco-Roman environment, given everything we know about male and female relationships in the first century, given that environment, can we neatly map what we see about male heads of households and say,

well, if we see a woman head of the household, then all the function that the man would have had would have been naturally ascribed to the woman. I'm not saying I have a problem with that. I'm saying I think some people in the first century might have had a problem with that. The whole argument for hosts being overseers relies on certain social norms, which may be true. But if we're relying on that social norm to assume that male heads would have been overseers, we are also relying on the social norms of the day to help us understand what would have been expected of a female host, but simply would, assuming that a female head of the household would be also the overseer of the church that met in her church, in her home, would this fall into the face of

the patriarchal culture that we are working with? Would a single female homeowner be viewed as the de facto leader over men? Some of whom, so if she, okay, say Lydia opens up her house, she's wealthy, she has a big home, Christians meet in her home, Acts 16. Well, Christians meeting, other Christians meeting in her home, some of them would have been male heads of household. Maybe they would have had higher status than her even. Is it simply the case that she owns the home? Would that mean that her authority, that she would be exercising authority over, say, another head of a household that happened to meet in her home? A married man? Would a single woman be exercising authority over a married man? And that would be not problematic in the first century? problematic in the first century. And you say, well, no, well, Paul would be fine with that. Just a greater Greco-Roman culture wouldn't, would be, maybe have a problem with that. But again, we're assuming kind of the Greco-Roman paradigm or the culture of the head of the household being

the overseer. So it's like, we can't, if we're going to assume a social norm from the Greco-Roman environment, head of the household overseer, then we can't say, I don't know, then we need to assume it and all that comes with it, which I think would at least raise questions about whether a single woman would be exercising authority over another woman's husband, especially if that husband is of a higher status. Like in the Greco-Roman environment, I'm saying that that would be, I think, problematic. Second, the typical structure of the home was patriarchal and therefore hierarchical. The person at the top called all the shots while everyone below them were to obey. The one at the top held all the power while all their subordinates,

women, children, slaves, clients, were typically of a lower social status and therefore had to submit to Big Papa. It's questionable whether we should be, we should quickly map this hierarchical structure onto the first century ecclesia, which from the beginning had been radically reshaped by some countercultural values of hierarchy, power, and honor. As much as I can get excited about women

too being able to hold positions of power and prestige as the heads of their households and therefore churches, I question whether we can separate the secular values of the first century households as churches from the kingdom values that war against them. Otherwise, patriarchal values are simply replaced by matriarchal values. The one thing that would change is that women too can be in charge, but the hierarchical structure remains intact. In other words, gender aside, does the New Testament endorse a church structure where wealthy, prestigious homeowners rule the roost? And this brings me to my third point. This is my biggest question about this. And again, these aren't ironed out

thoughts. This is my biggest concern with this argument though, is that if wealthy, prestigious, and powerful homeowners who own large homes were automatically grafted into Christian leadership. Does this match the qualifications for being a leader, an overseer in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1? Does it even fit the kingdom values laid down by Christ? Paul never listed wealth and owning a large home as criteria for leadership. I'm asking around, like, what am I missing here?

Because it seems like kind of an obvious point. Can we quickly assume that the wealthy women who owned homes large enough to host churches were automatically counted as their overseers? I mean, maybe, but I don't see, I mean, Paul never lists this as criteria for leadership. People say, well, it's just assumed. I mean, okay, we're assuming the assumption. Two authors have a really important article on this, Button and Van Rensburg. They have a good quote here. They say, it is argued that the hosts of house churches exercise leadership and authority in the Christian gatherings in much the same way that the pater familias, father of the family, of Pauline churches, its argument rests, rely too heavily on assumptions regarding the role of the household and retired now from Talbot University or Biola University, Talbot School of Theology. And he's done a lot.

He's kind of an expert in Greco-Roman context of early Christianity, done a lot of stuff on leadership in the first century. And he's also skeptical about this assumption. So I'm going to leave it at that with elder with the elder overseer there's just there's there's some there's some complexity here and I and now I go back and read some literature on this that I think a lot of literature just under appreciates some of these some of the complexity and I see people are smart people just kind of like well obviously women are owning homes they could be overseas like hold the phone here like there's that that here. That's a leap that we might be able to make, but we need to build a really big bridge across that. I don't know. My metaphor fell apart.

You know what I'm saying? There's more pieces here we need to put together before we just say, women, household leaders, therefore overseers. What about women as deacons? Every egalitarian I've ever read appeals to the presence of female deacons in the New Testament as proof that women can lead in the church. And complementarians respond in one of two ways. Either they say that there weren't any female deacons in the church, or they typically, they argue that the role of deacon is not one of leadership, but as the word suggests, one of service. There's two main passages that we need to look at. Romans 16, 1-2 with Phoebe, who's a deacon, called a deacon.

Was he just described as being a servant or is deacon there being used to describe the position of leadership that she has in the church? position of leadership that she has in the church. And then 1 Timothy 3.11, which refers to either female deacons or wives of male deacons. I spent a bit of time on that question, and I do think there's a much better case for 1 Timothy 3.11 referring to female deacons. And I list all the pros and cons of that view, which I'm going to skip. But the biggest question here is the word diakonos or diakonia, servant, service. It occurs frequently in Greek literature, loads of references to diakonos. And it's not all that clear that this, well, some would say it's very clear that the word deacon does not convey some kind of leadership position. Quite the opposite.

About a quarter of the usage refer to serving at a table. Another quarter refers to some kind of menial kind of manual labor or something that is not something that people in leadership do. In fact, people of leadership would be not doing diakonia in the Greco-Roman use of the term. Some debates about how Paul's using the term, there is an argument made by one of the more important books on this topic is by John Collins. Diakonia is in the title. I don't have the full title here. He argues that deacon does not, it does refer to menial stuff, manual labor, servant, slave sometimes.

But it also used as kind of an emissary, like a go-between, a representative, a messenger. And that is true in some of the cases, but as Andrew Clark, and even Collins recognizes this, that even when it does refer to some kind of emissary, a go-between, it still maintains this kind of like servitude meaning. In the New Testament, we see, yeah, I mean, even the passage I read earlier, Matthew 20, it says, you know, whoever wishes to be great among you shall be your servant, your diakonos. Whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave, doulos.

Doulos is the word for slave. Diakonos can mean slave. It doesn't have to mean slave. Every doulos was a diakonos. Not every diakonos was a doulos. To the Greco-Roman ears, when they hear that Phoebe was a deacon and the church had female deacons, they would not at all immediately assume, wow, you have female leaders. They would assume the opposite. Oh, cool.

You got women's servants in your church, you know, would be how they would readily recognize that term. Now, Paul does use it differently. I mean, he does call Christ a diakonos. He calls himself often, and he describes his own apostolic ministry as diakonia. I have too many references to the list here. He calls himself a diakonos of God. So deacon has a, it does have a why. So here's another thing.

Could deacon then be capturing the servitude, upside-down nature of leadership? So in a roundabout way, could deacon actually be describing Christian leadership because Christian leaders are servants, are slaves of their people? I'm using Paul's metaphor here. Or is it just a general term for all Christians who are serving others, who are imitating the service of Christ? The only place where deacon, the function of deacon is described is that first Timothy 3, 11 passage where it kind of gives a list of qualifications. And there, we don't have the same kind of description of deacon as we do as elder who are exercising some kind of leadership

over and teaching over men. As far as I can tell, there's no clear connection between deacons being teachers in the church. I'll come back to Phoebe in a bit because there might be something there. But in light of all this, I don't think it's probable that the mere use of the term diakonos, diakonia to describe the role that some women played in the church must mean that they were leaders. Again, this is me in part of my journey. If I'm going to keep researching deacon, I just, when people, you know, I'll see people get really upset at men that say, well, deacon, Phoebe's a deacon, doesn't mean she's a leader. And they say, you misogynistic bigot. How, if she was, hold on, maybe I'm just looking at how the word is used here. Given just the use of the word, I don't think it just leaps off the pages that deacon means leader.

I'm not saying that she wasn't a leader. And deacon maybe could be used in that sense. Kind of, again, capturing the upside down nature of leadership. But I think just the fact that she's called a deacon, the word is used too widely in too many different kind of contexts. You just assume that a woman called deacon is therefore a leader. Husband of one wife. I'm going to skip that. Let's go to – I'm already an hour in.

Let me jump to my second area of research. I'm going to try to go a little quicker here. And I don't want to give away all the good stuff here. Some of this – I do want you to buy the book eventually, which you'll have to because I could change my mind on everything I've said right now. This is part of the journey I'm on. Does the presence of female prophets in the New Testament prove that women can be pastors and preachers today is the question. I'll never forget Tom Schreiner, who I think still today would say this is the best egalitarian argument. I remember asking this 20 years ago say this is the best egalitarian argument. I remember asking this 20 years ago, what's the best egalitarian argument?

He says the presence of female prophets. He says the kind of burden of proof is on complementarians to say that this is not an authoritative position in the church and this is not akin to preaching and teaching in the church. and teaching in the church. So knowing that this is kind of, you know, for an honest commentarian like Tom Schreiner, this is maybe the main argument against his position. I was really curious to dive into this and man, like I hinted at earlier, I opened up a door to a whole new world of research of prophecy in the first century and in the New Testament. Some of the more significant studies are by David Hill, E. Earl Ellis, David Ani. Oh, there's another book. I'm blanking on the guy's name. He wrote a book called The First Theologians. It was good. Wayne Grudem, which we'll get to. Anthony Thistleton has a lot of good stuff on prophecy and his massive commentary on 1 Corinthians. There's a recent overview article by Blalock, and i'm blanking on his first name it's free

in the journal uh thamelios i just i just every now and i'll kind of google around and see if there's any good articles online not not blogs not pinterest but like actual scholarly sometimes there's scholarly articles um that are free online. And this is Blalock. I'm trying to look for his name, his first name. Anyway, he has a good overview of the different views on prophecy. I think he summarized like five different views on what prophecy means in the first century. And I don't think he was even, I don't remember him even really asking the question about women and leadership. He's just looking at what is prophecy. And I like it when you have people that aren't looking at this question through the lens

of women and leadership, because I think that can skew how they treat the evidence. That's another side point. One of the more frustrating things in this conversation is I have to look up... I'm so tired of looking up people's references, footnotes, books they're citing, extra biblical sources they're citing that simply either aren't true or incomplete because they are so driven towards a certain view they're trying to prove. The politicalization and the research here is just fascinating, which is why it's taking me, why I'm going so slow because I'm having to look up every single reference people cite because half of them don't support the point they think it does. Anyway, so this is why when I look at prophecy, I don't want to just rely on somebody who kind of has an ax to grind in terms of women leadership because I've seen time and time again when I do read stuff like that, they end up leaving out all the arguments that go against their, the view that they're

trying to promote. Is prophecy, first century prophecy similar to modern day preaching in the church? Again, don't assume pulpit, monologue, preacher, and a, I almost said a tie. It's not only going to be worse ties anymore, but don't assume what's going on today, but is there some overlap, some believer standing up or sitting down and communicating God's word, whether it's a personal revelation, part of scripture, whatever, in some kind of authoritative way to a mixed congregation to where people listening are expected to respond in obedience, confession, repentance? Is prophecy in the New Testament similar to modern day teaching and preaching

in church where somebody reads, interprets, and verbally expounds upon scripture with some kind of exhortative purpose, meaning a call to obedience and if need be, repentance? That's the question I'm asking. Obviously, prophecy isn't just foretelling, foretelling the future, but foretelling. That's not really debated. Of course, some prophets do tell the future. We see this even with Agabus and the book of Acts. But it's prophecy in both testaments is primarily foretelling, not just predicting. Women were clearly prophesying in the New Testament. So does this give us

biblical evidence that women are permitted to preach and teach in the church today? We have, do you want references? Do I have references? Yeah, okay. Luke, or no, Anna is called a prophet, prophetess. You have Philip's daughters who were prophesying in Acts 21, verse 8 to 9. Paul assumes women are prophesying in 1 Corinthians 11, 5 and doesn't have a problem with it. Acts 2 quotes Joel 2, Acts 2, 17 and 18 saying, you know, in the latter days, men and women will prophesy and dream dreams, I believe, and other things there. You have prophets, female prophets in the Old Testament, Miriam, Deborah, Huldah, Noadiah. female prophets in the Old Testament, Miriam, Deborah, Huldah, Noadiah. Huldah is a significant one there, which I haven't looked in too detail at that, but I'm excited to. Most of the monographs,

articles, people who have studied this out, who aren't literally looking at the women question, they're just looking at what is prophecy in the New Testament. The overwhelming majority did describe prophecy in ways that would be similar to some kind of preaching and teaching. It's not exactly the same thing. There's words for preaching, there's words for teaching, but there is a significant overlap in the function. The one major scholar who doesn't agree with this is Wayne Grudem. Now, so I know some of you love Wayne Grudem. Some of you don't know who he is. Some of you roll your eyes and you don't like him. Here's the deal. Whatever you think about Wayne Grudem, he is a scholarly expert in both the women question. Okay. Some of you are like, no, I think he sucks. I think his stuff is terrible.

Okay. Whatever. You don't agree with him. He is a scholarly expert, meaning he has done a ton of scholarly work on the question of women in the New Testament. But he is primarily an expert in prophecy. He wrote his PhD dissertation at Cambridge University on prophecy in the first century in the New Testament. It's not a slouch of a university, okay? It's not a confessional school where you can just line up with the school's position and then you get a pass. Like it's not,

you have to do good critical scholarly work to get a PhD from Cambridge University. So whatever you think about Wayne Gruden's conclusions, he is a scholar, an established scholar

in the intersection between women and leadership and prophecy in the first century. So I, he was my main dialogue partner here in my research because he was the one, I guess, the authoritative scholarly voice that says that prophecy is not similar to teaching and preaching in the New Testament.

So let me summarize his view here. Prophecy is, quote, not intelligent Christian preaching. He's saying this in reference to Acts 19.6. That is a byproduct of studying the scriptures and preparing a message. Prophecy, rather, is based on, quote, the prior reception of some kind of revelation, unquote. I keep forgetting my unquotes, by the way. I apologize for that. So don't, yeah. Hopefully you're not trying to transcribe this podcast. This revelation sometimes gives the prophet supernatural knowledge, like in John 4, 19, where the Samaritan woman says, I see that you're a prophet. A received revelation might give the prophet the ability to predict the future, as in the case of Agabus, Acts 11, 28, 21, 10 to 11. Prophecy also includes, quote,

the speaking of merely human words to report something God brings to mind, 28, 21, 10 to 11. Prophecy also includes, quote, the speaking of merely human words to report something God brings to mind, unquote, which is close to how prophecy is understood by many usually charismatic leading churches today. In my anecdotal experience, the speaking of merely human words to report something God brings to mind is how I've seen prophecy function

in a lot of churches today. But that's, I'm almost, today. But that's illustrative, not constructive. I'm not really interested in how it's used today. I'm interested in what it means in the New Testament. Such prophecies, quote, should not be considered divine obligation, but they should be viewed as the prophet's own fairly accurate, but not infallible, report of something he thinks, though not with absolute certainty, has been revealed to him by God, unquote. That's from Wayne Grudem. Grudem goes on to say, in contrast to prophecy, teaching is, quote, often simply an explanation or

application of scripture, unquote, or based on something equal to scripture, such as, quote, a received body of apostolic instructions, unquote, which ends up forming the New Testament. Far, quote, far from being based on spontaneous revelation that came during the worship service of the church, as prophecy was, this kind of teaching was the repetition and explanation of authentic apostolic teaching, unquote, and, quote, first provided the doctrinal and ethical norms by which the church was regulated. So, Grudem sees a difference between New Testament teaching, which is authoritative, does carry divine obligations, is only done by men, is based

on a prior study of scripture, whereas prophecy is not. Therefore, Paul's prohibition of women teaching in the church for Timothy 2 does not forbid womenition of women teaching in the church, 1 Timothy 2, does not forbid women from prophesying in the church since prophesying is very different and far less authoritative from teaching. I appreciate Grudem's argument. I think he, it's no slouch of an argument, no slouch of a scholar, but I do have questions slash pushbacks to his view of prophecy. So first of all, Grudem, one of the main pieces of Grudem's argument is that Old Testament prophecy is different than New Testament prophecy. That's a key foundation of his argument that the corollary to Old Testament prophecy is New Testament apostles. Apostles function in a similar way that Old

Testament prophets function. And that New Testament prophecy is different from Old Testament prophecy. I do see some differences here. Certainly, Old Testament prophecy, the sort of thus saith the Lord authority that that comes with, you don't, when you read 1 Corinthians 14, you don't see the same kind of thus saith the Lord kind of authority in how prophecy is described in 1 Corinthians 14 necessarily. It's a tough chapter. And I think there's, it's almost like sometimes it is, sometimes it doesn't feel that way in 1 Corinthians 14. But I could see could see if if first corinthians 14 is all we had then i could i could grant some some discontinuity here between old testament prophecy and new testament prophecy but you also have i mean when early on when new testament writers refer to prophets and prophecy like anna prophetess

zacharias john the baptist jesus you don't get the impression i mean this is probably the New Testament is not written yet. It's like all they had was the Old Testament scriptures. And then these, you know, people start writing about Jesus, the prophet, John the Baptist, the prophet, Anna, the prophetess. Like you don't get the impression that this is something categorically different than what we were just read about the pages before in the Old Testament. Agabus is not only, Agabus feels like an Old Testament prophet. He's even described, you know, he even says, you know, this is what the Holy Spirit says, which sounds like this is the sight of the Lord. And he even does these kind of weird signs and weird gestures and stuff that is reflective of some of the weird stuff that Old Testament prophets did. Like he's

described in a way that's very similar to Old Testament prophets. And yet in the same book, a couple of chapters later, right after Agabus, you see women being referred to as prophets. John, the author of Revelation, which is called a prophecy. We'll come back to this. John has a prophetic calling in Revelation 1, 9 to 20

that is clearly reminiscent of Isaiah and Ezekiel. John, in fact, does several things that echo the prophetic ministry of Ezekiel. So when John is called a prophet or at least writing a prophecy is described as being called just like the prophets of old, a lot of continuity between that and the Old Testament. So I'm not, you know, and this is foundational for everything Grimm's going to say, and I'm just not as convinced as he is that we should neatly separate New Testament prophecy from Old Testament prophecy. A second argument, this is really, I think this is kind of big. As I just said, the book of Revelation is called a prophecy over and over and over. Revelation 1.3, 22.7, 22.10, 22.18 to 19. And the word prophecy doesn't just describe the revelation that John received from the Lord, which he later ended up later writing down. Rather, the book itself is called a prophecy.

Four times at the end of the book, John refers to Revelation as the prophetic words of this book. 22.7, 22.10, 22.18, and 19. This places the emphasis on the book itself as a written example of New Testament prophecy. This is important because the book of Revelation is the most scripture saturated book in the New Testament. that comes with a severe threat to anyone who adds or takes away from its words in Revelation 22, 18 to 19. And various studies have identified up to a thousand references to the Old Testament in 22 chapters. Squeeze the book of Revelation and scripture will pour out. This certainly doesn't fit Grudem's description of prophecy as, quote, the speaking of merely human words or report something God brings to mind or, quote, subordinate prophecy being subordinate, according to Grudem, to the authoritative teaching of scripture. And it certainly doesn't feel that the book of Revelation, quote, should not be considered divine obligations, but they should be viewed as the prophet's own fairly accurate, but not infallible report of something he thinks,

though not with absolute certainty, has been revealed by God. The book of Revelation just doesn't fit Grudem's description of prophecy. He has a response I'm not going to get into. It's just felt, he obviously is aware of this argument. His response is very short and to my mind, very unconvincing. Moving on again, we're asking the question, is prophecy, New Testament prophecy, somehow, in some way, akin to preaching and teaching? One of the more important verses in this question comes in 1 Corinthians 14.3, where we're given

the closest thing we have to a definition of New Testament prophecy. Paul says, the one who prophesies speaks to people for their upbuilding, oikodomen, and encouragement, paraklesen, and consolation, paramouthion. I only say Greek words when I think they're important. The first two words here, oikodomen and paraklesen, are very important, especially paraklesen. I'm going to wrap up with prophecy and then I am going to, I'm going to, I'm going to try to wrap this up in a few minutes and then I'm going to, you know, I'm going to call it quits and I'm going to, I'll do another podcast summarizing some of the stuff I'm learning because this is getting way too long. I'm trying to keep this under an hour. It's like, ain't going to happen. Orchid of Man and Paraclasin.

under an hour. It's like, ain't going to happen. Oikodomen and paraklesen. Again, this is one of the purposes or goals of prophecy. It builds up the church, edifies the church. The word oikodomen, it can be translated edification or upbuilding, but it's our modern day, oh dude, you edified me the other day when you sent me that tweet. You know, the word orchid of men is typically way stronger of a word than, you know, man, that Chris Tomlin song you sent me. It's super encouraging, bro. My heart was warmed. I don't want to downplay it. That's, oh my gosh, that's cynical. But it's kind of this individual subjective warm feeling we get when

people do something that, oh, that edified me, bro. This word is typically way stronger than that. And there's a lot of people who've done word studies on this. There's a significant prophecy in Acts 15, 16. Well, the prophecies in Amos 9, 11 quoted in Acts 15, 16, where Amos prophesied that David's tent, his dynasty, his kingdom will be rebuilt, or whatever. This is kind of fundamental rebuilding, the building of the kingdom of God. Christ says, you know, I will build my church, orcidemeso, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. Throughout the book of Acts, the growth of the church is described as being built, Acts 9.31, Acts 15.16, 20.32. The term orcidemen, the verb in particular, is important

in Paul, where it often refers to a specific apostolic activity in relation to planting churches and raising up disciples. For instance, Romans 15.20, Paul says he does not want to build upon another's foundation, orchidomo. 2 Corinthians 10.8, Paul talks about his apostolic authority as something the Lord gave for building up. for building up. Also in 2 Corinthians 12, 19, Ephesians 2, 20 to 22, the church is described as being built upon the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. Here we have another connection between a word, the root from orchid and meadow and the ministry of the apostles and the prophets. And there's more, I mean, I could cite more passages here, Ephesians 4, 11 to 12, 1 Corinthians 3, 9 to 15 is really significant. So it's more than just individual subjective, warm encouragement. It is a foundational role in establishing the foundation of the church.

That was redundant. Shouldn't have said foundation twice. You get it. This is a really strong theological word. There are times when Paul says build one another up, Romans 14, 19. So it's not like oikodomeia is only something that church leaders or apostles or these authoritative figures do. It's most often used in a very theologically rich, strong sense. Let me quote Thomas Gillespie. He's the one that wrote that book. Now I forgot the name of the book. Before I said the name of the book, I couldn't remember the author. Now it's the author. I can't remember the name of the book. Anyway, he says, issue is not where the prophecy alone builds up the church, which is manifestly not the case. The question is how prophecy as the inspired word of the spirit contributes to this end. Essential is the notion that Ogedemen and the proclamation of the gospel are both

functionally and materially related. Okay. So that's one of the three words related to prophecy. The second one is super significant, paraklesin from parakaleo. Paraklesin is sometimes translated comfort, and it's used a lot. Parakaleo occurs 109 times in the New Testament. Paul uses the term 44 times as one of his primary commanding words, paraklesin. Has a range of possible meanings depending on the context, can mean comfort, urge, exhort, plea, ask, or comfort, urge, encourage, plea, ask, or exhort. Paul typically uses parakleos, parakleson, the noun, to convey some kind of authoritative exhortation expecting some kind of obedient response on the part of its hearers. Here, I think I'm drawing on, is this Claire? I think I'm drawing on Claire Smith here, a complementarian New Testament scholar who wrote a beastly book on teaching in 1 Corinthians and the pastorals. And she has a

whole chapter. I want to say beastly. It's scholarly, robust work, like 400 plus pages and one of the highest level monograph series that anybody can publish a book in. So she's done a lot of work. And she's the one that says this is one of Paul's like commanding words. And she's commentarian, by the way. I'd be curious how, well, there's more she's written on this. So maybe she explains why she's still commentarian, even though she has this rich study on paraklesis. It seems to go against it, but she's a sharp cookie. study on paraklesis. It seems to go against it, but she's a sharp cookie. In the pastorals, parakleo occurs in connection to teaching in 1 Timothy 6.2, 2 Timothy 4.2, Titus 1.9. Paul uses the noun paraklesis in 1 Timothy 4.13 in close connection to reading and teaching scripture.

Until I come, Paul says, devote yourself to the public reading of scripture to this translation says preaching, Paraklesis, translated preaching. I would probably maybe to avoid anachronism, maybe to exhortation and to teaching. So reading scripture, exhortation, teaching. It's sandwiched between reading scripture and teaching. In Corinthians, 1 Corinthians and the pastorals, the word is used 14 times in these four books in, quote, quoting Smith, a didactic sense is present in all but two texts. The two texts he cites is 1 Corinthians 4, 9 and 16, 12.

Ulrich Mueller says that Paraklesis is, quote, a correlate of gospel preaching and judgment and grace. E. Earl Ellis surveys several passages where Paraklesis is used and concludes that it captures, quote, the minute, the specific ministry of a prophet. J. Thomas says that, quote, on the basis of statistics alone, parakleo, paraklesis are among the most important words for speaking and influence in the New Testament. In fact, the book of Hebrews is called a, quote, word of exhortation, a word of paraklesis. Luke frequently refers to paraklesis in connection to various prophetic prophets and their ministry, including John the Baptist, Barnabas, Silas, and Judas. There's several times the word, yeah, word of exhortation.

Again, the whole book of Hebrews is called a word of exhortation, a word of paraklesis in Acts 13, 15. A sermon, I don't know how to describe it. It looks like a sermon to me that's filled with scriptural interpretation is called a word of exhortation, Acts 13, 15. Same thing with Acts 13, 32, where prophets, I believe they're Silas and maybe Barnabas, like basically exhort the church as prophets. Chris Knights has an article asking our same question, is prophecy similar to preaching and teaching? He says there can be only, there can be seen to be a clear,

a functional overlap between prophesying and preaching the word. Oh yeah, this is where John Calvin, he says, yeah, those with the gift of prophecy, quote, were blessed with a unique gift of dealing with scripture, not only by interpreting it, but also by the wisdom they showed in making it meet the needs of the hour. John Calvin. Dude's complimentary and like, no, no tomorrow. But then when he gets to women, he's like, well, obviously women can't be doing this.

but then when he gets the women he's like well obviously women can't be doing this so calvin believe i i don't want it that's it's he's john calvin i'm not i'm not going to rip on john calvin he'll haunt me tonight in my dreams he'll come back from the dead and slap me upside the face with five points or whatever i don't know yeah it's interesting when people seem to be so committed to a complementarian view that when they're not thinking about that question, like, oh, no, prophecy, clearly, you know, dealing with scripture authoritative. But then later on, they go, well, yeah, women can't be doing that. There's something fishy that I saw in Grudem's research here. Gruden believes that New Testament prophets and prophecy wasn't nearly as authoritative as teaching and certainly not authoritative as apostolic ministry. He says, quote, prophets in the New Testament churches rather reported in their own words something which it seemed to them God had forcefully brought to mind.

So teaching based on the written word of God had far greater authority than occasional prophecies, which the speaker thought were from God. And to drive a wedge between apostolic authority and prophetic authority, well, he just, he, in his argument, he's constantly driving a wedge between those two. I think it falls apart when you get to the book of Revelation, as we already said. Well, there's four times when prophecy and apostles are mentioned side by side in ways that are curious. In 1 Corinthians 12, 28, God says, God has placed these in the church, first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, next miracles, gifts of healing, helping, managing various kinds of languages. There's all kinds of discussion about what is Paul trying to do here with the ordering.

It can't be chronological because prophets came before apostles. John the Baptist, Jesus, Old Testament prophets. So it can't be chronological. Is it hierarchy? I don't know. It's just unclear, kind of the ranking here of first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, whatever it is, though, it's interesting that you have prophets right after apostles and before teachers. And Paul's not afraid to call prophecy, you know, the greatest gift or the greater gift more than tongue. So he does, he's not, he's okay having some kind of, some kind of ranking here in

his mind. In three times in Ephesians, Paul closely links being a prophet with being an apostle. Ephesians 2, 19 to 20. So then you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of God's household built, oikodemeo, on the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Jesus Christ himself as the cornerstone. Again, Ephesians 3.5, the mystery is revealed to God's holy apostles and prophets. Ephesians 4.11, Christ gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers. It's curious just how he lumps prophets and apostles in the same category as part of the foundation of the church. So yeah, but one's authoritative and one's not. I don't know. That just doesn't feel right to me. So what does Grudem do about this? Grudem says that in Ephesians 2, 19 to 20 and 3, 5, I'm drawing on an older work of Grudem. So

if he's changed his view, I apologize. This comes from stuff he wrote back in the 90s. He says, this isn't prophets and apostles. It should be translated like apostles who are also prophets, apostle prophets. So not two different types of people, but one. Apostles who are also prophets. Is it because of the Greek? Is it because of exegesis that he separates or collapses these two together? Or is it because he knows women are prophets? And so he can't have women being included here in Ephesians 2 and Ephesians 3. I plead the fifth. I don't know motivation. All I do know is that I don't think his exegesis is very convincing and neither does anybody else. So I looked at, I was like, really? Wait, this seems odd to me. Like apostles and

prophets seems pretty clear in the Greek. Yes, they're joined by one definite article, the apostles and prophets. The covers both. But Dan Wallace, Greek grammarian, has shown in his PhD dissertation that this construction often includes two different things. The nouns refer to two different things, not prophetic referred to different things, not, not prophetic apostles, but apostles and prophets. Uh, Wallace's argument seemed convincing to me. And I looked up 10 different commentaries in this passage to see what they said. 10 commentaries, 10, 10 top commentaries. I looked at, uh, Lynn Kohik, Andrew Lincoln, uh, Clint Arnold, Margaret McDonald,

um, Harold Hohner, uh, O'Brien, PTO O'Brien, Ernest Best, Frank Thielman. I looked at eight commentaries and then other scholarly articles on this passage and not a single one agreed with Grudem. In fact, Clint Arnold, I think, and several of these are commentarian. It's not like this is like commentarian versus egalitarian. This is just what does the verse say? Clint Arnold said that he's, quote, not aware of any commentators who have accepted Grudem's view here. And even Grudem says, well, no, in Ephesians 4, apostles and prophets are clearly different. So he accepts, or he says that in chapter 2,

they're the same. Chapter 3, they're the same. But when it gets to chapter 4, they're different. He has to say they're different because they're clearly different there. I mean, I think they're clearly different in all three passages, but so I don't know. It just felt fishy to me. I was like, well, yeah, I think your women in ministry conclusion seems to be shaping your exegesis because your exegesis is not only not convincing to me, but not convincing to any other scholar that I've seen so far. Maybe, maybe, maybe I'm missing some, maybe I need to look at 20 commentaries. Um, and I might find some. So, um, it's probable, if not certain, that Paul refers to apostles and prophets as both playing fundamental roles in building up the church. This should come

as no surprise, since we've already seen that one key purpose of prophecy is that it builds up, the church, 1 Corinthians 14.3. It's natural then that Paul would say that the church is built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, which has to include women. I mean, people say, well, women are clearly called prophets. There's no reason to exclude them here. Similar significance is accredited to prophets in Ephesians 3.5, to whom the mystery of Christ has been revealed. The mystery of Christ has been revealed to both the apostles and the prophets

who formed the foundation of the building of the church. Prophetic gifts are also essential for the training of the saints and the work of ministry to build up the body of Christ. Okay, so all that to say, let's come back to our question. I do think right now in my journey, there is good scriptural evidence that prophets and prophecy in the New Testament included some kind of role in the church that would have included what we would describe today as teaching and preaching. There is a debate about what the New Testament means by teaching. John Dixon has an interesting argument there that I might come back to later on. But I don't want to rest everything on one argument. I don't want

to, I want to keep researching and writing and reading and seeing what am I missing here? There might be more stuff, but where I'm at now, just the argument from prophecy would seem to at least allow for and celebrate, not just allow for Like, I guess I'll allow it. No, I mean like promoting women teaching and preaching in a mixed congregation of men and women today. That does not necessarily mean they should or are allowed or can function as elders and overseers. Just because people are teaching and preaching doesn't mean they're eldering.

Elders are teachers, but not every teacher is an elder. And I think that's pretty, I don't think that's too disputed. So anyway, that's where I'm at in my journey. Goodness gracious, an hour and 40 minutes in, and I only covered half of what I want to talk about. I'm going to come back later on. And I do want to talk about where I'm at on 1 Timothy 2. I'm still working through that passage I have about a kind of a running commentary. How, let me see how long my commentary is so far. It's 36 pages and I'm like halfway through this passage. So a lot more

research to do here. So I would like to just kind of summarize some of my findings there. And I do want to look at Priscilla, the deacon and benefactor maybe, and letter carrier maybe of the letter to the Roman church. So anyway, for those of you who are fully asleep yet, I hope you enjoyed this podcast. I know it was a bit more technical and thorough than I normally am, but just to give you a little insight into where I'm at in my journey, it's been super interesting and I have a lot more work to do. So thank you so much for listening to the show. If you would like to support Theology in the Raw, you can go to patreon.com forward slash Theology in the Raw, support the go to patreon.com forward slash theology

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