Theology in the Raw - S2 Ep1066: From Complementarian to Egalitarian: A Conversation about Women in Leadership with Dr. Nijay Gupta

Episode Date: April 10, 2023

Dr. Gupta teaches New Testament courses at Northern and works closely with the Master of Arts in New Testament and the Doctor in Ministry in New Testament Context cohorts. Dr. Gupta has been teaching for more than a decade, is the author of the recent important study, Paul and the Language of Faith and the forthcoming Tell Her Story, which addresses women’s roles in the church from an egalitarian perspective, which forms the topic of our conversation. Nijay currently serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the Bulletin for Biblical Research, Co-Editor of The Bible in God’s World series with Scot McKnight, and as a member of the Editorial Board of both Ex Auditu and of the Biblical Interpretation Series. He is a graduate of Miami of Ohio University, Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary, and the University of Durham. Support Theology in the Raw through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theologyintheraw

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How Women Led, Taught, and Ministered in Early Church. I'm partway through this book, Tell Her Story, How Women Led, Taught, and Ministered in Early Church. I'm partway through this book, and it's absolutely fascinating. Nije is an incredibly good scholar, super careful, very thorough and thoughtful, and also very clear in his writing, which is one of the things I appreciate so much about this book. It's very well-researched, very well-argued, but it's also very easy to understand. So please welcome back to the show for the second time, the one and only Dr. Nije Gupta. Nije, thanks so much for being on the podcast. Excited. Thank you. And I have in my hands this book that is now published, but I got the pre-release copy. So tell her story, how women led, taught, and ministered in the early church.

You say at the beginning of the book how you have really been researching and thinking through questions around women and church leadership for, I think you said, like 15 years. So this has been a long journey. Can you, for those who haven't read the book yet, which is probably most people since it just came out, tell us about your journey. What interested you in this specific topic? Yeah. I mean, we got to go back to my college days. I went to Miami University of Ohio and I, you know, obviously not a Christian university and I got really involved in campus

ministry, Campus Crusade for Christ and other navigators, other groups. And at that time, this was the late 90s. If you wanted to be a hardcore, serious Christian in Campus Crusade, you read cover to cover Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology. That was like the thing to do. And these were the heydays of John Piper too,

Let Nations Be Glad,, Christian hedonism. In college, I drove 16 hours from Cincinnati, Ohio to Dallas, Texas to hear John Piper speak in chapel at DTS. So I was, you know, I wanted to be a serious Christian. I thought that was the way to do it. And I call this package theology, where if you like what someone's selling, you buy the whole package. It's like Logos Bible software, right? You get like 4,000 books in one package. So I liked what Piper was selling about being serious about your faith, what Gruden was selling about being serious about doctrine. So I took the package and in the package comes this theology about men and women. And I carried that to

seminary to Gordon Conwell. And as I moved in circles that were PCA, Orthodox Presbyterian, I went to an Orthodox Presbyterian church. And I was told, stay away from the master divinity women because they are disobeying God and they want to be pastors. They were putting agenda. They were putting ideology over the clear teaching of scripture. So I did. In fact, I wrote my first systematic theology paper on why women shouldn't be pastors. Oh, wow.

And I got an A, by the way, on that paper. This is at Gordon. This is at Gordon Conwell, yeah. And I think looking back, I was trying to prove that I belonged in that club. I don't know why I wrote it on that topic, except I was thinking about it, and I wanted to prove that I understood the topic. Then I started to engage with Master Divinity students that were women, one of them being my future wife, Amy, and other women. I was also told to stay away from certain female faculty, but spending time with some of these students, I was like, they don't seem liberal.

They seem like they really love Jesus. They're trying to figure out this ministry thing. They're trying to figure out their calling. Combine that with, by kind of accident, I became a TA for Catherine Crager, who was the founder of Christian for Biblical Equality. Kind of with some fear and trembling, I didn't know if I should be her TA, but I was in this journey and I wanted to talk to her. She was so sweet. She was so generous to me knowing the struggle I was going through on this topic. And I read everything I could get my hands on. At that time, this was Ben Witherington, Craig Keener, R.T. France,

Walter Kaiser. I read everything. I read hundreds and hundreds of pieces of scholarship. I wrote my last year, my third year systematic theology paper on why women should be pastors, must be pastors. And I think what the big thing that changed Preston was some of the quick lines that I had heard about why women shouldn't be pastors ended up being more complicated. For example, Adam was made first and Eve second, and that gives, you know, law of primogeniture. And then I think RT France points out, God chooses the second or the last sometimes like he did with David, right? You know, so, so some of these things started to erode. I call it an edifice. This edifice

started to erode. There wasn't a thing where I switched over like, I'm now confident in this. It was more that this other thing had started to fall apart. The pieces just weren't as neatly put together as I had thought. And so on this topic, Preston, I know you're thinking about it a lot. On this topic, I taught my students, I'm not 100% sure I'm right. And so on this topic, Preston, I know you're thinking about it a lot. On this topic, I taught my students, I'm not 100% sure I'm right. That's how it is with most things. Yeah, I was gonna say that's just, everybody should say that about everything. So I call it a so help me God belief, meaning I would rather meet my maker, having enabled women to use their gifts and perform their ministries. And I'd rather be

wrong having done that than the opposite. Now, I want to be confident. I wrote a book on it. I think I'm right. I've argued along those lines, but I don't think I'm 100% right. But I think life and the reading of scripture and all these other things have continued to affirm this for me. But I went through a pretty major journey in seminary. And then, you know, we're going to get to a funny part here where our mutual friend, Joey Dodson, he sent me a text one day with a picture of just a line from a student paper. And it said, as feminist scholar Nije Gupta says. And this was four or five years ago. And I said, that's funny.

I said, I got to earn that. I got to earn that label And I don't think of feminism As having this crazy agenda I get this from John Stackhouse Where he says, a feminist believes That women should be treated equal to men So hey, I'm a feminist then And so I ended up writing a series of blog posts

Actually, I ended up writing If you remember this I wrote an open letter to John MacArthur after the Beth Moore go home incident. And I wrote it in the voice of Paul. This is dangerous. I didn't know how dangerous that would be at the time. I wrote it in the voice of Paul. It was viewed probably, I think, 60,000 times in a couple of days.

And I ended up doing some, a blog series and then a publisher approached me and they said, you know, is there a book in here? And at first I said, no, but what I landed on Preston is there's great scholarship out there on Phoebe, Junia, Priscilla, Deborah, all these people, but not really for lay people. Lay people don't get access to all this great scholarship. Like Priscilla, there's very little written on Priscilla that's academically in the know that lay people can actually understand. So I wanted to write a 200-page book

written for pastors and lay people that's going to lay out all the scholarship that backs this notion that women were accepted into all areas of the church. So I'll tell you my tagline. You can start the interrogation there. We sit around saying, where can women be and what can they do? But when we actually read the Bible, what I noticed is women are everywhere and they're doing everything. Can you expand on that? Yeah. So let's take the John MacArthur go home incident. I know there's all sorts of questions about what he meant, but this idea that there's

a place for women and there's a place for men. And this was actually true in the Roman world as, as well, where they, they made a differentiation between domus house and forum public. And so generally speaking, women were meant to be in the house doing domesticated work and men are out meant to be out there arguing politics, doing public business, you know, all of that. Uh, and, and we carry that with us, right? We carry this notion of, you know, the domestic wife and the businessman, you know, that, that sort of conception.

Um, but what we see when we read the Bible is women are all over the place in places they quote unquote shouldn't be. So just to take, I actually start the book with Deborah. Yeah. Because Deborah's fascinating because when we look at the Old Testament, we think of the patriarchs, we think of Moses, we think of the prophets, the major prophets, and their men, we think of the kings, we think of the warriors and the book of judges has, um, this is one of the darkest periods of Israel's history. No one did was right in the eyes of the Lord. Everyone did was right in their own eyes. And there was no law. There was not yet a King in Israel. And yet clearly the most important leader in the book of judges is Deborah. And what's interesting about Deborah is not only is she a judge,

which is true of Samson and Gideon, but she's also a prophet. And add on top of that, a victory song is sung in her honor. Now, there was no king yet. So who do the people go to as a leader? Deborah, by her sitting and taking court, right? She's cast in the image of Moses. Can you read that real quick? That point can't be missed, that the language and scene of her sitting and casting judgment, like being a judge, people are coming to her, is, you would say,

is textually reminiscent of Exodus 18 when Moses is doing that same thing. Absolutely. And this idea that the whole point of her doing that is she is adjudicating people's questions about dispute to each other, but questions about the law of God. And there's no one else to go to. And the reason I titled the chapter Prophet Judge, Mother over Israel, because that's what the song of Deborah says about her. This idea of her being a mother is she's the guardian of the people. And how do we know that that's the case? Because her work institutes the cycle of 40 years of rest. At the end, there's 40 years of rest, which is what it says when the

leader has saved the people. And so whenever people say, oh, women are not as good at, or women shouldn't, I like to ask, what do you think people said to Deborah? Do you think people went to Deborah and said, you need to be married, or your husband, and she was, but we don't know what happened to the husband. You need your husband to be doing this judging with you, or he needs to be sitting on the throne with you. He needs to be going into war with you. The song needs to be about the two of you. It's pretty much just about her. So I, I gotta be honest. I was, I've never been that impressed with using Deborah as an example to contribute to the women in church leadership question until I read your section on it. Yeah. You, cause what you, you kind of hinted at it

here, you, and I haven't done a lot of research on her in particular. So I, maybe this is like well-known in the specific conversation about Deborah, but you know, you, you point out that it's not that she's in some kind of simply a judicial or even a military position that in covenantal Israel, there's such an intertwining between religious and political leadership that we can't say, you know, because I know commentarians would say, oh, sure, you know, women can serve in the Supreme Court. You know, the same people might say, you know, especially if they're Republican or whatever. Um, you know, the same people might say, you know, especially if they're Republican or whatever. Um, but for church leadership, that's spiritual direction. But you can't separate political from spiritual direction with Deborah because that those two, those, you. The stuff that she's judging is not simply like secular cases and she's not giving spiritual oversight. Those categories weren't separate in that world. Is that correct to say? I mean.

Absolutely. Who is the most similar figure to her? It's Samuel, who's also a prophet. Right. Right. And the fact that she's a judge and a prophet, right? She's called a prophetess or whatever. She is. Yeah.

She plays that role. And what's interesting is, um, some scholars have said she's not raised up as a judge. Uh, she doesn't fit the pattern of being raised up as a judge. And I talked to a judge, a scholar, and she said, she's the only one where the verb judging is actually used in its original meaning of being a judge and being a judge over Israel is being a spiritual leader because you're interpreting God's word, right? You're not talking about a secular law. You're talking about God's law. So it's fascinating. And if you read the rabbinic literature, if you read some of the second-level Jewish literature, they're interpreting her as a judge. So when people say, oh, she's not really a judge,

or even the thing with Barack where people say, oh, she's there to shame Barack. She goes as a concession into war. Imagine being a woman, maybe the only woman going into war. Think about the faith and courage that she has to have. And then for her to be the focus of the song in chapter five, people have said for a long time, you know this Preston, she was only a judge because no man, she was only a judge to shame men who didn't step up. But here's the problem. Look at Samson and Gideon. They were terrible judges. Gideon was cowardly and Samson broke every rule in the book. He was a

Nazarite with these vows and you read any commentary on judges, he breaks all three vows. It's like saying, I promise to do this, these three things, and then you break exactly those three things, which is what he does. Deborah is the only judge given extensive narration that nothing negative is even implied of her. And she has a victory song of celebration that follows up, which is kind of a theological interpretation of how to understand Judges 4, right? 100%. 100%. And they attribute the victory to her. Right. Yeah. Barack has mentioned at the beginning, but by the end, it's really just about her.

Here's my other, I guess, complementarian pushback. Not that I'm representing that side. Is that, you know, judges, a couple things. Number one, it's filled with irony. It's looking at a society that is sort of being turned inside out. That is just a backward society. And with the progression of the six judges, you move from best to worst.

Ehud, there's, you know, is the first major judge. There's questions, there's kind of some question marks around him, but there's nothing blatant. The two question marks, he was left-handed, and that culture that might have been seen is like, what's a leader doing being left-handed? And there's two, I think, in Judges uh is it three um there's two mention of idols like he's he turns back where

the idols were it's like wait how come they're still idols and so just some fuzz just kind of slight so if you take the first one then we get the samson the last major judge he's the worst yeah jeptha is like second where so there seems to be almost this like, this like slow downward spiral. If Deborah is portrayed as really positive, it kind of interrupts that pattern is the one pushback I've heard. And the other pushback kind of along that lines is yes, she is really, it's the whole point of the story is irony. Like leadership is so bad in Israel that we even have tongue-in-cheek like a woman that's more faithful than men. I'm not sure that helps the argument. I mean, often – well, okay. To where we shouldn't take her as a model.

The literary point is not her being lifted up as a model of leadership. The literary point is her being lifted up as a piece of irony to show how poor society is at that point. Even the women are leading the men kind of thing, which isn't at the end of the day, trying to be a positive statement. It's more of a negative statement about society. I'm not saying I believe this. I'm just trying to represent the best. Yeah. I've taught a course on judges before. My take would be the point of Judges is to set up the monarchy in many ways, to set up the need for leadership, the need for a Messiah, because David is the prototype of the Messiah. So Judges, to me, sets that up. You're in between Joshua and the monarchy,

right? And Joshua as a book is pretty triumphal. Judges is a low point, right? And I think what Judges is doing is saying getting in the land is only the prelude to establishing Torah, temple, and monarchy. Those are the big three, right? So it's really laying the backdrop to that. I wouldn't go straight to irony. What I would say is the people need leadership. The people need leadership. The people screw up, right? This covenantal cycle. The people screw up. They need leadership. I would give the leaders more credit than that. I've always wondered Gideon's International, why they use Gideon as a hero. They do really see him as a hero.

And actually, the Patristic fathers saw Samson as a hero as well. They saw Samson as a redemptive figure, as sacrificing himself when he pushes the pillar over, sacrificing himself to kill the enemies. So I think there's more than one side to that. For me, and we've already talked about this, I want to work off the most obvious clues. And the most obvious clue for me is the song of Deborah. That's the most obvious clue. And literally nothing negative is said about Deborah in that. And to me, that's the key that unlocks who she is. Would you say it's the function of songs in the Hebrew Bible and poetry in general? I'm thinking out loud here, this could be totally off, but like that, if it was just the narrative, narratives can have

subtle ironies, kind of like the narrative of Solomon. You know, Solomon, the whole narrative seems to be an ironic, blatant picture of an anti-Deuteronomy 17 king. Deuteronomy 17 paints this beautiful picture of a king who won't amass wealth, women, military power, and Solomon does the opposite. But the narrator doesn't tell you that. He just kind of says, yeah, look at all this. His house is bigger than the temple. Here's all the wealth, all these women. And then he comes out at the end and says, yeah, this is an example of you know so so narratives can be a little trickier but the fact that you have this song as a theological interpretation of the narrative like you do in is it exodus 15 14 and 15 the red sea and then the song you have uh other places i'm

blanking on hannah's song you have the magnificat oh right yeah yeah so so would you say that just from a genre perspective i guess you've already said i'm just kind of i guess probably agreeing with you that that that really is a significant if we didn't have judges five it might be a little more like oh how are we supposed to interpret this it's a little not too clear um i completely completely agree with that i i think the song uses imagery uses um kind of definitive statements to tell us what the narrator's thinking interesting and it is very positive on but old deborah yael and kind of was it sisera's mother who's like how come how come my son, my husband, what is it? She's like, my son's late.

My son's late from coming home. How many women is he going to bring with them? You know, as captives or this like weird, like a woman shaming other, like, it's just kind of a picture of this, the darkness of society towards women. How does Yael, some people say, you know, jail, but there's no J in Hebrew. Yael, the people say, you know, Jail, but there's no J in Hebrew. Yael, the tent peg woman, is she just furthering this kind of like positive portrayal of women? Or what's her relationship to Deborah in the story? Yeah, it's hard to say.

In the song of Deborah, it's interesting that the song highlights three women when normally battle songs highlight men. Right? So you have the highlighting of Deborah. You have the highlighting of Jail. And you have the highlighting of Deborah, you have the highlighting of JL, and you have the highlighting of the mother of Sisera. And that tells me that the narrator's thinking about women. I'm not going to say that these women are coming to power to shame men who should have been in power. I think what it is is saying that God is often working in ways that we may not predict, right? God may be asking us to look in other

places for his work. And that happens throughout scripture, so it's not that strange to see. But I think that is a clue that we need to, you know, the power belongs to the Lord. Well, and this could, going back to my egalitarian side, even if it was irony, that still could point towards the upside down nature of the kingdom and the new covenant that, yes, it is ironic that in a patriarchal culture, this woman stepped up and yes, there's a bit of, not comedy, but yeah, maybe just irony there, but that could theologically contribute to the idea that in the new covenant, yes, the first will be last. The people that society says are last will be first and the lowly will be leaders. And even women who are seen as lowly and incapable are

actually the most capable in the kingdom or just as capable in the kingdom. So even if we did have a bit of irony, that could have more theological contribution than just dismissing it as like, ah, it's just irony. Yeah, absolutely. Let's jump ahead to Luke chapter one, where Mary sings a song of praise. She is in many ways the opposite of Deborah in the sense that she's not high society. She's not a person in a high level of power. Deborah's probably older. And here we have Mary as a young person from nowhere, a nobody who's in a scandalous situation of being pregnant. Right. Um, and she's singing a song that is very similar. That seems to be an homage

to the song of Deborah. Oh, it is. Um, I think that scholars make a connection between Hannah's prayer, Deborah's song, and maybe some psalms. Oh, I didn't know it had the Song of Deborah allusions in it. Yeah, I think it has a similar style of interpreting a triumph of God. Interesting. Okay. And so you have her sing this song, and she's kind of a, from a worldly standpoint, Mary has no power. Whereas Deborah has a lot. Mary has no power and yet she's saying he will pull down rulers from their thrones and make the rich go away empty, you know, empty handed.

I think that is pointing to these subversions. I don't know how you feel about William Webb and his work on hermeneutics, which is his philosophy. I like it. Interpretation. He talks about Scripture as kind of in this trajectory or flow and not treating it static. But he talks about what he calls breakthrough moments. So let's say in theology there is an ideal.

Let's say no slavery. Or let's say men and women are equal. You're not going to get that everywhere in scripture because scripture is a story that's unfolding. But sometimes we'll catch a flash of the ideal and we'll see it in little places here and there. So I think that I would treat the story of Deborah as one of these breakthrough moments where we're able to kind of pull the blinders open and see just a small slice of the ideal that, hey, women are capable of this. Culturally, this was an anomaly. Culturally, in a patriarchal world, this is an anomaly.

But those breakthrough moments tell us something about what God believes. God believes that Deborah was capable. God believes Deborah was wise. You know, some of those things I take as breakthrough moments. That's interesting. Let's fast forward a little bit. So you went, actually, let's go back to, give us a summary of your reading of the creation account and maybe maybe that'll we can dance around to first timothy too or um but yeah maybe he goes to lay the land within the kind of complementary and egalitarian i know those terms aren't always widely loved but um yeah what are some of the issues going on in genesis one to three that each side kind of pulls on and they give us your reading of that passage. Yeah, so I try to take each chapter on its own.

Genesis 1, Genesis 2, Genesis 3. Genesis 1, I call the kind of blimp view perspective. You're getting this really high level perspective of creation. And all we know from Genesis 1 is that man and woman are created in the image of God to be co-rulers over the earth, to subdue it, which I take from Terrence Fred time as to control it in such a way that's going to lead to its flourishing. So the joke I use my students is, you know, based only on Genesis 1, if a dinosaur has a question, they're going to go to whichever human they encounter first. They're not going to pick one based on gender, based on Genesis 1.

Now, Genesis 2, you do have Adam created first, which it becomes clear that this is male. And then you do have woman created. But I think it's a misunderstanding to say it was because he was lonely. I would rather translate it, he needs help. And the language of helper, and I'm sure you've heard this a million times in sermons and other places, it doesn't mean helper like secretary or assistant. It means helper as in someone that's going to close the gap in completing a task. Right. Now, that gap could be tiny and the gap could be huge.

Depends on the context. Well, especially one of the major commands given in Genesis 1 is be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, which is hard to do without an opposite sex partner. Right. an opposite sex partner. So, um, right. And what's interesting is I always thought that Adam just goes around and looks at animals, but it's got, it says God brings them to him. So God is trying to show Adam the insufficiency of other created beings for doing that. So that, that tees up needing someone just like him. And so Eve is created and, you know, nothing in the text interprets this in any way as a minor figure. In fact, everything sets it up for being someone just like him, but they do fit together like puzzle pieces. That's, that's,

that's the notion. Nothing is said there specifically of capability or leadership. The vibe we get is oneness. You will become one flesh, right? It's unity. Chapter three, I call, instead of calling it the fall, I call it the undoing, the unraveling or the undoing. Because what we see is that kind of unraveling or undoing of god's desire for harmony and oneness right this beautiful plan is being subverted now in terms of like eve is is more sinful because she's gullible or whatever and this is where we could talk about first timothy or second corinthians if you to, but the problem is scripture tends to blame Adam. If you count up references to Adam and Eve, Adam's taking the blame here. And I don't know

what you want the blame to fall on, but there has to be some idiocy going on with Adam if he's just going to go along with this, right? So when people want to say, ah, she's more sinful or she's more easily deceived, he seems to be pretty easily deceived too. So, um, Paul does have a certain take on it. We could talk about that, but based on Genesis, what we see is both of them make some pretty big mistakes and both of them are cursed. What about, okay, it's a couple of things. Some people point to the naming in 223, she shall be called woman where she was taken out of man. And then you have another naming, right?

In Genesis three, but that's okay. Genesis three gets messy because now we're in a sinful world or whatever. So what is the paradigm and what is a departure from that paradigm is in question. But in Genesis 2, do you see, because some commentarians will say, the act of naming implies authority. Adam names the animals.

God names creation. Adam, kind of, it's a little vague here, but she shall be called woman. Did you interact with that or what do you, do you just find it not clearly clear? Not much, but again, like I'm, I'm kind of a minimalist on reading too much into things of any kind. And, you know, there are times where, you know, we name God, we, we create names. Names don't mean personal names. They often mean titles. We give titles to God that doesn't attribute to us authority over God, right? And often names will be given that aren't used. Like for example, he'll be called Emmanuel.

He's never actually called Emmanuel. So it's kind of funny when we say, here are some names. I don't know. I guess for me, often my default is, is this borne out in reception? Meaning, are there clues that the earliest interpreters took it that way? Some of those things I don't see coming up in reception history in a big way. But again, I'm kind of a minimalist. I want to be cautious not to read too much into that. Yeah, that's helpful. And I've seen, yeah, I used to think that that was, all right, that's check the box.

That's a good commentarian argument. But in reading the egalitarian responses to it, I mean, they brought up what you said, just the act of naming isn't just always clearly like it can go both ways. It can not mean anything. And just to read, to assume that that, again, the naming in Genesis 3 is a little more explicit. It does fit more of the pattern, I think, of Adam, Naaman, and the animals. But in 223, it's not, she shall be called woman. Who's calling her woman? Is it Adam? Is it God who will call? It's just a little more vague. So at the very least, that argument, I'm like, well, it's a little more complicated than just draw a straight line between Naaman and authority. What about Adam being held responsible for the sins? I mean, Romans 5, sin came through Adam. Even though

Eve technically was the first sinner chronologically, why is Adam held responsible? Because some people say, obviously, that's leadership in the home. If there's sin in the household, it's a man's responsibility. Look at Adam and Eve. Yeah. Okay. So this gets, this gets into hermeneutics. So I think every, every book like this should come with like a 10,000 page appendix on hermeneutics. But the reality is the Bible was written in a patriarchal society. Um, and we have to combine the reality of patriarchy with what God wants to do, you know, in the world and what he's unfolding in that. And so it's just going to be obvious to most people that he is kind of seen as, um, you know, I, I think in a, for Israelites reading Genesis, they're going to take for granted men have legal responsibility to the household, read the old Testament. I'm not naive

that the old Testament gives a responsibility to men in the household. The question is, how is God working within the systems that we have created? I don't think God created patriarchy, but I do think he's speaking their language. We call this divine accommodation, right? He's going to be speaking their language and into their world. In terms of why Adam, I think this would just be taken for granted in the ancient world, right? That the man's be held responsible. However, this is really interesting. And I may be avoiding the question a little bit here, but you could come back to it.

I think this was pointed out to me by Craig Keener, but Ananias and Sapphira in the book of Acts chapter four, they withhold, you know, they kind of lie to the apostles, right? And they pretended to sell their property and give all the proceeds to the church. And Peter calls in Ananias and basically tries to get out of him what happened. in Ananias and basically tries to get out of him. What happened? He lies. And then what happens? He struck dead. Now in a patriarchal society, it should end there because the man's in charge and the woman would either be let off the hook or she would be given a minor punishment, but she's actually brought in and it actually narrates this, which is interesting. It narrates that she's brought in, asked the exact same questions, and then, oh, I hear the footsteps of people getting carried dead body out. She's given the exact same punishment.

Now, if you compare that to the Old Testament where women are often given minor punishments because they're of lesser value or they're treated differently because of just the way patriarchy works. That to me is fascinating. That she's given the exact same speech by Peter, the exact same expectations for responsibility, and the exact same punishment of death. She's given the same agency as the man, which would have been... Talk about egalitarianism. It made me immediately think, and we might be dancing around a little bit, but the household codes, Ephesians 5, where whatever the submission and headship means there, it is the most shocking part about that passage is that she has given agency in that passage.

Paul is directly addressing women. He never says, keep your women in submission which would have been aristotle and all the other households calls as far as as far as i'm aware he actually gives lots of agency to women so i think this is where us moderns we get maybe too hung up sometimes on the submission headship language which again that's important but like let's let's see what else is going on here that the ancient would have noticed right away and been kind of shocked at. Yes, I want to mention the household codes before you steer the conversation to 1 Timothy. Gordon Fee pointed this out to me, and this kind of blew my mind. He made a statement in a couple of different books that when the household codes are being read to a church, if a woman is there

who's actually the head of her household, the independent head of her household, she's going to put herself in the position of the husband in the reading of that. So actually people have used, Margaret McDonald has used the example of Nympha from Colossians chapter four, who we think of as a female head of her own household, four who we think of as a female head of her own household or lydia for the book of x female head of her own household she's actually going to transfer everything that the household codes is saying about the father of the household to herself because legally she's actually the head of the household she has patronal power because she power. Because she's a widow? She's a widow, right? She's a widow. She's the head of household. If there's no son that's an adult,

she actually is going to be master of the slaves. She's going to be caretaker of the children, and she's going to be the person in charge. Now, to prove that, jump over to 1 Timothy, but not 1 Timothy 2. Later in the text, it's talking about young widows. And it's saying young widows should learn how to be responsible people, including oikodespateo, becoming good masters of your household. They're widows. They are masters of their household. They're meant to be good masters. Now, Preston, you and I know that households, as we think of it, are four or five people, right? But a wealthy household in the ancient world could be up to 500 or more people.

Wow. Because a household means, yeah, employees, estate workers. If you're wealthy, your household could be hundreds of people that are part of the network under your care, the employees and network under your care. So I mentioned my book. Think of them as small businesses. And there were many. Since you haven't read the whole book, Preston, I'm going to throw a few statistics at you. Richard Saller, Roman historian. Yeah.

I tried to deal with outside scholarship because we get so bogged down in our theological arguments. Richard Saller says in Rome in the first century, early principate, he believes, according to the evidence he's found, women owned up to one-third of all property in Rome. Oh, my gosh. There was a census that we have from Roman Egypt, which was a big city. So it corresponds to other big cities. One out of every four households had a female head of house, meaning the mother, the woman was the only legal authority in the house. When we have those statistics, we can see how so many women were in the church and we can see how so many women would have been widows. So how much of the New Testament talks about widows? Because there were a lot of them. And I think Phoebe was a widow, right? You have all these women named in Romans 16 without a man,

Tryphena, Tryphosa, Persis, right? Mary, no man. And it's a good guess that they were widows. And it seems to me that these widows were allowed to operate as leaders. So with the household codes, they were the one fulfilling that role. I don't know if a lot of listeners know this, but the household codes don't come from the Old Testament. They actually come from Greco-Roman philosophy and politics. They come from Aristotle, and the Christians were adapting to the common domestic philosophy of the time and how households should operate legally.

So for entering the realm of legality, women were allowed and could thrive as independent leaders of their household. When you combine with the fact that most churches were house churches, I don't know if we have another hour for this, but I get into a whole argument and discussion about how heads of households were the most natural people to be episkopos, overseers, bishops.

I'm excited to get there because I've been wrestling with that correlation for a while. In fact, I've written on it, not publicly, but yeah, really, really wrestling with that. So you write on that because I've been looking for literature. really wrestling with that. So you, so you write on that. Cause I've been looking for literature. I've asked around for people that cause a lot of people assume head of household, therefore a church of each of their house, they would be the de facto spiritual leader, the Episcopal. Um, I just, I do question. Well,

can I try to convince you in like three sentences? Yeah. Yeah. Do you want me to? Yeah. Yeah. You go first and I'll, and I apologize. It's been like four months since I've really wrestled with this. So I'm not even sure if I have my same pushbacks in my head. I remember, or I'll tell you to read a book called House, Church and Mission by Roger Goering. Blew me out of the water. Probably one of the most important things I read for the research for my book. But I'll tell you this, episkopos is not a Christian term. It's not a religious term. I basically translate as manager. And the movement from episkopos to oikodespotes, which means household master, they're parallel terms. Whether they're synonyms or not,

I don't know, but they're parallel terms. But this is really interesting. So take Lydia in the book of Acts. Paul goes to preach in Philippi. He's looking for Jewish men. He doesn't find them. He finds these women. Lydia becomes a believer and her household. No man is mentioned.

We can take for granted she's a widow. Most scholars think that. There's no reason not to think that. Then the apostles go. They receive hospitality from her, which is a sign that she's the head of household. Then they go off on their adventures. They get in jail, they come out and where do they go? They go to her house. They go to her house. Yeah. Why would they go back to her house? Yeah. Because there's a group of believers that are gathered there. She's become

a de facto leader of these people. Now, okay, that doesn't mean she's a pastor. We have to understand the first century. They weren't filling out job applications, right? There are certain signals that Paul uses when he's talking about leaders. So this is interesting. He doesn't tend to use leadership titles. He'll say people that have care over you, which is 1 Thessalonians 5, people that toil and labor and work hard. He says that of Timothy. He says that of Stephanas, a variety of leaders.

He says of Iodine and Syntyche in Philippians 4. So this idea that there could be female heads of households and they would be natural leaders for a house church makes sense because often these bigger households, they're wealthier, they have more education, and they have managerial skills. So Goering makes this argument that the apostles actually target householders, people that ran households. And he actually makes a link between who Paul baptized and the fact that they're householders. So 1 Corinthians 1, he says, I only baptize these people, is it Gaius and Stephanas or whoever it was. And then we find out those are actually householders.

Right, right, right. It's an interesting connection there. It's very interesting. I think on a societal level, it actually makes a lot of sense. And I think on a societal level, it actually makes a lot of sense. and online. With leading academic programs like business, film, science, and more, Biola's biblically integrated curriculum and spiritual formation also helps students grow closer to God and gain a deeper understanding of scripture. In fact, I was just on the campus of Biola touring the campus and talking to several deans and professors, and every single person I talked to was so utterly passionate about making Christ first in all things and instilling Christ-like virtues in the hearts and minds of their students. I mean, honestly, I was so impressed with how

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to love and walk with your LGBT loved one as Christ would want you to do. There's 11 sessions that talk about things like how to begin approaching the LGBTQ conversation, how to respond when your child comes out, how to navigate questions of faith with your child and navigating partners and weddings and much, much more. There's loads of testimonies from parents themselves and from LGBTQ kids. So you can learn from both sides of the relationship. We've also included a ton of supplemental resources

that go along with all the different sessions. This resource is geared towards parents, but honestly, I think it would be very helpful for any Christian that has an LGBTQ loved one in their life. So to learn more, go to parentinglgbtq.com or you can visit our main site at centerforfaith.com. That's parentinglgbtq.com or centerforfaith.com. Where I get hung up, well, a couple of things. For me to picture in a Greco-Roman environment, I mean, everything you said, like the wealthy female household being successful. Clearly, Phoebe has a lot of wealth. She's funding all kinds of stuff. hosting a gathering where other men and women are gathering, where the husband of another,

you know, a husband, wife, couple coming to that house gathering because this woman happens to be wealthy or happens to have a bigger home, hence she's hosting the gathering. Am I supposed to imagine that this single widow female is giving spiritual oversight over another woman's husband who might be spiritually qualified simply because she owns a home and is wealth? And that leads to my second part. Where in Paul's criteria for leadership is homeownership and wealth given criteria for being a leader, a spiritual authority over somebody else. It's not. But if you look at the pastoral epistles, 1 Timothy, management, wise management of the house is. A qualification, yeah.

And so, you know, to me, that's clear enough. But you may already know this. Women were priests in pagan cults. Pagan cults were huge. They weren't just hobbies. They were seen as part of the civic infrastructure. So the idea of a woman being a religious leader was not only okay, but they could wield massive amounts of power. So for example, the Empress Livia had an entire cult in her honor. She was deified after her death, not immediately, but she was. There was a woman named Eumachia from Pompeii who was kind of a big deal, independent woman in that society. And she was a priestess of the major cult there. But you could ask the same question about a man.

Under what circumstances would Paul give a man leadership over a household? He wants to see the Spirit of God working in that person, but practically, he wants a good manager too're suggesting being the default kind of who's leading the home. And therefore Paul writes Timothy saying, Hey, we're going to make sure people are spiritually qualified to lead, not simply because they have wealth and clients, because even first Corinthians one to four, it seems that this patron client kind of form of leadership was the problem that you had these people that were, Andrew Clark argues this, I don't know if he's, I mean, he's a pretty compelling scholar, but, you know, that it seems like Paul's dealing with these kind of broken Roman systems of leadership where simply because you're wealthy, simply because you have clients, therefore you are now the de facto leader in the church, whereas Paul kind of

confronts that by giving spiritual qualifications. Well, let's just take the example of Nympha. confronts that by giving spiritual qualifications. Well, let's just take the example of Nympha. You know, if you go to Colossians, he's basically saying he sent a letter to Laodicea, he sent a letter to Colossae, and he wants them to exchange letters. Why is he working with Nympha unless she is the house church leader? Because if he's working with somebody more responsible, then he would have just named them, right? Why her? Is she just an agent? Is she a secretary? The pattern of language that's used of Nympha and her house, of her church, is the same pattern used in the rest of his letters about a leader of a house church. So there's no reason to believe that she's not, except that we say that a woman can't be a house church leader now for me we the

bible doesn't use the word pastors as leadership titles right so a house truth leader as close as you get to a pastor right right right so it's not like because i you know the complementarian pushback is well yeah i mean even the commentary in churches today if you have a wealthy woman at church widow or whatever and she's ahead of a household maybe she's a businesswoman she opens up her home for bible study she's's maybe given a taught, hey, thank you so much for coming. She buys the food. She is influential, but that still doesn't necessarily mean she's offering spiritual authority. You're saying that, yes, that might be true today in our culture, but in that culture, spiritual oversight, financial oversight, oversight of the home,

and managerial oversight, all of those would have just been meshed together. Oh, yeah. Romans had a double religion. They had state religion, and they had house religion. So house religion would be the religion of the Lares and Panates. The paterfamilias, the head of the house, was seen as the religious. They were responsible for the religious well-being of the household, which includes not only biological family members, but everybody. Which is why you often saw mass conversion of a whole household like with Lydia. But what's interesting is you don't have that with Onesimus, but we can come back to that later. But you would have mass conversion of the household to whatever religion the father

is because the father is the everything leader of the household. And those people in the house are seen as clients, quote unquote clients, meaning they are followers of that person. But. But let's just use example of Priscilla. Priscilla and Aquila to me are the closest thing to an egalitarian relationship we see in the new Testament. I don't think they would have thought of it that way, but the fact that they're always together, their names are always together. And her name is mentioned first. Sometimes I was able to get a hold of Margaret Mitchell's translation of a hard to find text of John Chrysostom's homily on Priscilla and Aquila, which is different than

his homily on Romans 16. And in that less known homily, he actually talks about why she is named first in a lot of the namings of the two. She says she's the more pious of the two. This is a fourth century theologian. This isn't a modern day egalitarian. And Chrysostom is actually shocked that Junia, for example, is called an apostle. This is amazing. She's an apostle. Who could have thought, right? So he's not really always kind of naturally gravitating towards giving women the highest props. But in this case, he actually says Priscilla is more religious, which I take to mean she's more invested in ministry than he is. I want to thank you for that. And as a good scholar nurtured in the UK,

I must say, Nije, I'm not quite convinced, but I'll keep thinking. No, but you're filling in some gaps that I've been reflecting on. So this is actually really helpful. I'm excited to read the section in your book. Going back to kind of the background, tell me if I'm thinking along the right lines here. Why is it important to recognize that a third of women own property in, say, Rome or the Greco-Roman world? And I think a quarter, you said, in Rome and Egypt. You have Livy and women.

Certainly, it was mostly men who held positions of power and influence and all this stuff. But you had many exceptions to that norm. Why is that important? Because it seems like if we say this Christian church didn't also reflect some of those maybe exceptions, several exceptions to the norm, that almost makes the early church to be more patriarchal than the Roman culture. was okay with women in certain, you know, all things considered in certain leadership positions like that wasn't unheard of. Um, is that, is that why that's important that the, that the, even the pagan broader culture, which was very misogynistic, very patriarchal, even they had women in leadership position.

Yeah. You know, it is a matter of, you know, there's a famous, there's a famous saying by philosopher. You may have heard the same before. Um, the map is not the territory. Have you heard that one before? No. So this is, this is Jonathan Zed Smith picks up on this. Anyway, uh, the map is not the territory. The idea behind that is we are so used to looking at maps. Sometimes we forget the map is a constructed guide to a territory, but the real territory is actually much more complex and different. And so if I'm driving on Google Maps, it's not going to show the grass. It's not going to show the trees. And what I'm trying to do in my book is to say patriarchy is the rule of the day. And what I'm trying to do in my book is to say patriarchy is the rule of the day. At the same time, the on-the-street reality is women were in positions of social power in religion and business and even politics.

And the church often stepped into the way things were, and they wouldn't change things unless they felt that it was ethically wrong. So for example, leadership titles. The vast majority of leadership language used in the New Testament is actually absorbed from popular culture. So diakonos, deacon, is a term that was commonly used in popular culture for agency or service. Laeturgos is a term that means administrator or servant that was popularly used in civics. Episkopos is a term from Greco-Roman world. Maybe even ecclesia, the word for church, could come from the Greco-Roman voting system. So they were just absorbing that. What that does for me is it helps me understand

They were just absorbing that. What that does for me is it helps me understand Paul is rubbing shoulders with a lot of women, a lot of women that we think are single. He's actually treating them as leaders because of the way that he talks about them. Eurydice and Syntyche struggling side by side for the gospel. Mary worked hard for the Lord. This is his language of leadership, right? Here's a question that kind of struck me as I was researching at Romans 16. Paul's in Corinth and he's writing to Rome. He said he's never been to visit these churches, yet he names all these women in Romans 16 as if he's met them. How has he met these women if he hasn't been to those churches? Because they travel for ministry. And he even says, some of them risk their necks for me,

right? He says, the mother of Nehru has been a mother to me also. How? How has that happened? They are out and about doing ministry. And so this defies that assumption, women belong in the home or they belong behind the scenes. No, they're out doing frontlines ministry. That's what he's saying about Yod and Syntyche when he says their names have been written in the book of life. It means they've done some pretty big stuff in the name of Jesus. have to agree with that it's just there but does that like when when they worked hard they labored and toiled for the gospel they um risked their lives like nobody's gonna say women can't do that but does that necessarily imply leadership that's that's always where i get hung up like who's the famous missionary that got murdered um the mid 20th century what's elliot yeah yeah no one's gonna say and elizabeth Elizabeth Elliot is like the queen of commentary. She literally went back to the village to evangelize where her husband got murdered.

I would say risk her life for ministry, struggle for the gospel, my word. And any sound commentary is going to say the church, the kingdom of God could not move forward without the profound work of women. Does that necessarily mean that they have to be leaders? And even my fear is that in an attempt to empower women by saying they, they, they can also be leaders. Are we investing too much emphasis on,

on, on leaders? Well, I was just going to say, are we focusing too much on titles? Cause Paul doesn't he almost never uses a title for a person he does for phoebe he calls her diakonos but by diakonos he doesn't mean assistant he's using it as an honorific title that's clear enough from the

nature of a commendation he says sister phoebe and sister means someone just like me i have a whole article an argument about that but he's basically, by her being a letter carrier, he's investing her with some measure of apostolic proxy. I discussed that, but letter carriers weren't just messengers. She's setting up shop there. She's going to be there for a while. Whatever reason she's there, if they have questions, they're going to ask her. And I agree with Beverly Gaventa and other scholars, Scott McDyett, who say she's going to be prepared to answer questions that they want to ask her. And I agree with Beverly Gaventa and other scholars, Scott McDyett, who say she's going to be prepared to answer questions that they want to ask Paul. Right. So for her to be a diakonos, I think is a big deal, but let's talk about Junia. Let's talk about Junia. Just, just imagine this, just imagine this for a moment. Paul says some

interesting things about Junia. I take for granted she's a woman. We could talk about that, but yeah, I think everybody, almost everybody, I think everybody, there's a couple of detractors, detractors, but let's talk about Junia. This is some stuff just gets buried that are really important. Number one, Anijay for the maybe small percentage of people that don't know what you're talking about. So we're talking about Romans 16, seven, Paul mentions a woman, Junia, and says she is highly esteemed. And most translations now say among the apostles, as in she is one of the apostles. There is a small percentage, which does include Dan Wallace and others who say, given the grammar, she has a good reputation by the apostles, which means she isn't an apostle, but she has a good reputation among the other apostles. So there's a translation difficulty there, which until I read Wallace's work, I thought even that wasn't a possibility.

But he's a pretty good grammarian. The problem is Richard Bauckham has made, I think, a slam dunk case that we need to trust the patristic writers whose first language was Greek. So we call those Hellenophones. So the Hellenophones only entertain the possibility. They never even mention another possibility that these two people are not apostles. They just take it for granted. that these two people are not apostles. They just take it for granted.

The only reason people started questioning it is when Junia is considered a woman and she couldn't be an apostle, then they question it. But we can talk about it later. What I want to talk about is, think about this. You tell me, when do you think Paul became a Christian?

Just give me a guess. How old was he? What year? Oh, you're killing me. Did you put me on the spot of something I should know? I'm a Paul guy. Let's say mid-30s.

Yeah, mid-30s. Yeah, sure. Let's say mid-30s. Okay. That's not meant to be a trick question. What does he say about Andronicus and Junia? They were in Christ before me. Before me.

Yeah. They represent an earlier generation of Jesus followers. First of all, that is just amazing by itself. Other than the disciples and Mary, we don't know anybody else really from that generation, right? This early generation, he says they're Jewish, right? You put the pieces together, they were probably with Jesus. You can't say that 100%. They could have been in some of the stuff in early Acts. They were probably with Jesus. You can't say that 100%. They could have been in some of the stuff in early Acts.

But then even patristic writers have made a connection to say, this is a husband and wife couple, and they were sent out with the 70. I think that was Origen. I have to look again. But I think it was Origen who said that. They were sent out with the 70. So I don't take them as apostles in the capital A sense of the 12 or the 13, or I take it as that there was an apostolic school. Barnabas, right, was a part of the apostolic school. Paul was higher than the lower people in the apostolic school, but sometimes had trouble fitting into that top group. But they're part of this group. And this is also something pretty profound. They were in prison with Paul or as well as Paul.

Preston, I spent a lot of time researching this. Women don't really go to prison in the ancient Roman world. We have almost no evidence of women prisoners. We have almost no evidence of women prisoners. In fact, the only concrete evidence we have are from Christian texts, including the legend, the story of Felicity, Felicitas, and I can't remember the other woman's name off the top of Felicity. Yeah. And then we have this story of Junia. And I, I actually reached out to some Romans, uh, historians, modern Roman historians, including Peter Oaks, who I'm sure, you know, and I said, what kinds of crimes would they go to prison for? Because it's petty crimes, petty crimes. You wouldn't go to prison for you'd either get a corporal punishment or you get fined right so you're really only talking a handful of high crimes like murder robbery and and we can rule out that paul be commending them for that so if we take away uh sinful crimes right and we

think about what are what would be crimes that they could be accused of that would be true to Christian leaders. Then we're left with basically treason, which they would be killed for that, or inciting a riot. Paul's rounded up for that. My question is, what's Junia doing there? What's Junia doing amongst the very few people that are being rounded up and put in prison? Rome only puts people in prison because they didn't have jail. They just had prison. Rome only puts people in prison because they consider them a threat to the order. Otherwise, from all these books I've read, Brian Rapsky, Craig Wansink, all these people,

they said a woman getting in trouble would be sent home to be punished and shamed by her family for a petty crime. But only for the most heinous and serious of crimes, and read the book of Acts, would you put someone in prison, right? Like Paul, he gets into prison for what they think of as major disturbances of the peace. What's she doing there? If she's supposed to be behind the scenes or if she's supposed to be even just evangelizing. I know what you're saying about Elizabeth Elliot, but in the first century, evangelizing was leadership.

We don't get the sense. Forbidding Philippians, first Thessalonians, you're sharing with your neighbors. But if you're out there in the public square sharing, you're probably a trained leader. So, okay. I've not thought about that before. And we're not talking about just anybody. We're not talking about Andronica Jr., just rogue Christians deciding to evangelize. What does Paul say about them?

They're older in the faith than him, which means I think of them as his aunt and uncle. He's thinking of them like, not literally, but in India, we say auntie and uncle to all older people. So when we think about that, how could they not be leaders, President? And so if somebody, because here's what I've often heard is, yeah, of course, women can evangelize. Of course, women can be missionaries and share the gospel. Of course, women can, you know, one-on-one, Priscilla Aquila, take Apollos aside and say, hey, here's, you know, let me give you a personal kind of like lesson here in theology. you saying that that perspective is just too modern that it's not understanding what who would have been viewed as authoritative in the ancient world if they're doing these other things that those were leadership things i'd say they all fit together to paint a picture i mean it does say

either that they were apostles which i think they were but i don't think they were capital a apostles i think they're part of a trained apostolic school, right? People that were getting their training or people that were part of an apostolic cohort. They were part of a broader team of missionaries. So real quick, because that's like Tom Schreiner and other commentarians would agree with you on that. They would say, no, I do think she's an apostle, but the term apostle kind of doesn't, and I think Schreiner says, I don't want to put words in his mouth, but you know, yeah, they're more like a missionary than a capital A apostle. And it's, I'm like, well, what? So they're allowed to like take leadership overseas, but not.

Seminary is available now to everybody, but who gets training of that level in the ancient world, in the early church? Leaders get training. I mean, you can't just show up to Antioch Cemetery and get professional training. And this may segue to 1 Timothy, but when it says I don't allow women to teach, we use the word teach today generically. I can teach you how to tie your shoe. I can teach you tennis. But I think that when Paul uses the word didosko or didake, he's talking about teaching theology. He's talking about the deposit of faith that is the gospel. He's talking about this mantle of knowledge that we consider the truth of what the gospel is. He's not just talking about any kind of teaching. I don't think he's even talking about inspirational preaching. I think he's

talking about, so I think that these, you know, quote unquote apostles, or I think Paul would want to make sure that any leaders going out there are going to have training, training as leaders. Yeah, let's go to 1 Timothy then, because this kind of ties full circle from the creation account in Genesis 1 to 2. 1 Timothy, for those who aren't aware of it, so 1 Timothy 2.13, I do not allow women to teach or, you know,

athutane, athentane, exercise authority. We're going to leave that little open ending because it's a really difficult word to translate, but to remain in silence or quiet, have a quiet demeanor, I think is what he's saying there. Four, Adam is created first. And this is, you know, I had Bill Mounts on the podcast and he said, you know, were it not for 1 Timothy 2.14, he says I would be egalitarian. So really important transition there. From a complementarian perspective, Paul's reason, theological reason for women not teaching exercise authority is because of the creation account, Adam was created first. Now we may say like,

what does that have to do anything? Well, I don't know, but Paul saw value in Adam being created first as it pertains to teaching and exercising authority in the church. So help us out with that because that's been a sticking point for me. I do think it's a little more complicated than I used to for sure, but I would say that is one where if you don't think about background stuff, you don't think you just read the text, it seems to support a complementarian understanding. Sure. Sure. Yeah. Okay. Uh, you know, first thing I say, cause I know a lot of people reading the book, my book will say, um, Oh, I don't buy your arguments. I don't buy your arguments or you're pleading too much or you're, but here's the reality precedent. You know, this is biblical scholar, uh, interpreting the Bible theologically is like analyzing a crime scene, right? We have to make a case for how everything fits together, right?

It's CSI. Whether we're talking about violence, whether we're talking about homosexuality, whether we're talking about hell, it's a crime scene, and we're all constructing theories, and we're talking about hell, it's a crime scene and we're all constructing theories and we're trying to put the pieces together. And, and with difficult criminal cases, right? Some pieces are going to, you're going to privilege some information over others. So I, I'm willing to admit that with first Timothy, I admit there are some things in there that seem like they support a complementarian case. The reason I,

you know, follow an egalitarian, uh, form of, uh, theology and leadership is not because I think everything fits neatly together, but because I believe the preponderance of evidence point to women leaders. And I,

and, and, uh, I feel like what the early Christians did was to say, who is gifted for this, uh, who has gifted for this? Who has these abilities, responsibilities, and go with that. Okay, having said that, I want to tell you what has – I've always struggled to write on the topic of women in ministry for a book because I didn't want to write on 1 Timothy 2.

For the very reason that it's hard to respond to the complementarian arguments. But I want to say a few things on the preliminary end, and then we'll get into what I think is happening with that Genesis text. Number one, it's a misunderstanding to think that the pastoral epistles were written as an instruction for the church in a sort of generic way. Phil Towner, who's written some of the best scholarship on this, has said we shouldn't even call them pastoral epistles because they're not written as a guidebook for pastors, even though they do help pastors out very much. They're written under conditions of false teaching. In many ways, Paul is locking down the church in 1 Timothy and Titus under the conditions of false teaching. Think about COVID, lockdown conditions. We're going to do things in a way we normally wouldn't do them, right?

So in that sense, he doesn't even tell pastors and teachers and leaders what to do. He really tells them about character when he talks about bishops and deacons and whatnot. Okay, let me ask you this. This is a rhetorical question, but if you want to answer it, you can. Timothy, I believe Paul wrote this letter to Timothy, Paul himself, or through some helper, but I think it was written in Paul's lifetime. Paul wrote this, I believe, to a real Timothy. I believe Timothy was the closest person in Paul's life, right? Philippians 2, nobody cares about the things of Jesus, only Timothy, right? Nobody in the whole world was

closer to Paul and knew more about Paul's thinking than Timothy. So why does Paul introduce this teaching as if this is the very first time Timothy's ever heard it? If all Paul wanted to say was women can be great leaders, but they just can't move above this barrier into teacher and elder pastor, why does he have to explain it to him in a personal letter as if it's the very first time he's ever heard it? If all he was doing is saying, hey, there's women going crazy there, you know what to do, wink, wink, nudge, nudge. If that's what he's taught in 1 Corinthians, if that's what he's taught in other settings, 1 Corinthians 14, it would be kind of a no-brainer, right?

All he'd have to say is, hold fast, stand in the faith in the Lord, right? You know what we've taught. I don't have to remind you, but he doesn't do that there. He has to explain it to him using rationale. But let's just talk about authentio for a minute. Real quick, I'm just trying to think how would I push back? Could somebody say, well, he also gives all these lists of leadership criteria. Wouldn't Timothy already know that?

Is that news to Timothy that leaders can't be drunkards and they can't be husbands of more than one wife? Or I mean, I don't know. husbands of more than one wife or, I mean, um, I don't know. But usually to use, I mean, you and I both agree to use a Genesis text is bringing out the big guns. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's fair. Right. He's bringing out the big guns. So you're saying if this was just such a basic understanding of the church, that women could do lots of stuff. They just can't be teachers and, you know, uh, elders or whatever. Then Tim, before Paul even sent Timothy to pastor this major church in Ephesus, that would have been kind of theology 101 from Paul. He wouldn't have...

Yeah. If you can read it along a pattern of pure complementarianism, then this would just be Paul having to give him a little bit of pep talk. But to go into who was formed first and who was deceived, either Timothy has changed his to have authority over a man. He has about 20 other common terms he could use, including exousia and exousiazzo, which are his normal words for authority. But he had curiao. He has all these terms that he could use. And as linguists, you and I know that rare terminology tells us, usually indicates rare circumstances. Now, I'm often trying to explain this to lay people, so I explain it this way. Imagine you hear a word at church that you've never heard before, you've never seen written before, And after that day, you will never ever encounter again in your life. That's the kind of rarity of this verb. Now, if Paul wants to make a clear

teaching to Timothy about men and women, why would he choose a term that most people have never heard before? When he has equivalents in the minds of complementarians, he has an equivalent that would lock that in. Now, this is interesting. Tell me what you think, because I didn't defined negatively in Greek dictionaries, negatively meaning domineer or usurp authority, in Greek dictionaries prior to the middle of the 20th century. We see a change, a movement towards a more neutral or positive interpretation of authentico once christians started writing lexicons once not christians once religious once religious institutions started because i guess christians have been around for a long time but once religious

institutions i do think that articles have been written and this and that but even some of those articles they've they've admitted i put this in my footnotes but they've admitted to retracting some of their statements. And yet BDAG followed. BDAG is a big dictionary, by the way. Everyone listening is a dictionary that everybody respects, everybody uses. I don't like BDAG. But BDAG followed a couple of articles, at least one of those articles the author has admitted to flaws in his methodology. I think it was Will Shire. Well, I did pretty extensive research on

all the original uses of authenteo. They're weird texts. There's some weird texts, but what I found, something that I haven't seen, and I haven't read everything on it. I read a decent amount, but what I haven't seen people draw out, because you get the same scholars looking at the same text. One says this is clearly negative. Another, this is clearly positive or neutral. One thing that they haven't really considered is that even texts that don't seem negative, they're often in a master-slave relationship. Or domination. Yes. Like the planetary ones.

Yes. The planetary ones are weird. And people say, see, this is just talking about planets dominating each other. I wonder if, and this could fit in with some of the background work done on Ephesians. Sandra Glahn and others are doing great work. And even Bruce Winter's work on the new Roman women. that and even bruce winter's work on the new roman women and you know could there could he kind of be saying like these these women in this culture there's kind of this movement of women that were kind of mastering men and dominating men and he he really selects a specific word that has that

that's typically used in that kind of context kind of like if we use the word oh nijay stop punting to you know whatever it's like well, it's a football term. It has a really kind of a picturesque, unique thing to fit the situation that I wonder if Othenteo could have that. The problem is we don't have a whole lot to go on. It is interesting that the noun is used in ancient Greek literature to be murder. So clearly, the noun can have a really strong negative connotation. So man, do you want me to jump into the Genesis text? Yes. And I do have, I got somebody waiting in front of the podcast. I'll do it really quick. So I propose two theories in here. They're different theories. One is the new Roman women theory, which you can read about.

The other theory is the Artemis theory. And Artemis was the patron deity of Ephesus. Now, Scott, some scholars have pushed back to me and said, why are you bringing in outside stuff? Well, we have to explain texts, like why is Paul talking about baptism of the dead in 1 Corinthians? Paul talks about a pie to Gagos in Galatians 3. We have to explain some of these things based on culture. So Artemis is fascinating because all ancient cities had patron gods, but Artemis was like, it's like a certain city obsessing over their sports. Some cities more than others, right? So Ephesus obsessed over Artemis. We know that from the book of Acts, Graves, Artemis, and Ephesians. And what do we know about Artemis? It was associated with violence. She was a virgin, a virgin single deity. There was some sense of female empowerment, which you can read about in my book and a book by Jerome Murphy O'Connor. And this is fascinating. She was believed to have been born nearby to Ephesus, she and her twin brother Apollos. And guess who was born first?

Artemis. She was born first, and then she grew full size immediately and then helped to birth her brother. And then there are all these traditions there, how she is superior because of being born first. Now, if there's somehow false teaching has convinced these Christian women that there is this superiority, right? Then Paul is basically saying, listen, let's bring you down, but not down below men, but down from up here to being equal. I'll say one last thing, and I think we've got to wrap up. But Scott McKnight wanted to meet with F.F. Bruce while he was doing his PhD. He finally got a chance to do that.

I don't know if you know the story, but he finally got a chance to meet with F.F. Bruce. And they're having tea and he asks him, what do you think about women's ordination? And he says, I believe in women's ordination. He believed women can be pastors. And then he says, what about First Timothy 2? And Bruce, who I consider a legend, says Paul would be upset that we're treating his letters as Torah, meaning universal law for everybody. These are individual letters and we have to discern what is relevant at all times and places and what was instruction given for one particular community. That was FF Bruce. That wasn't some liberal. No, no, not at all. I mean, he's a stalwart of 20th century evangelicalism.

It wasn't some liberal. No, no, not at all. I mean, he's a stalwart of 20th century evangelicalism. Yeah, man, I got so many questions. Maybe I'll have you back on. But thank you so much, Nije. This is a fascinating conversation. I appreciate your just depth and scholarship.

My goodness. So again, your book is Tell Her Story, How Women Led, Taught, and Ministered in Early Church. And I could vouch for the fact that your book, if anything, is incredibly clear. You don't need to be a scholar to read it. And yet I can tell you're incredibly careful with your scholarship, even though like you don't have a ton of footnotes, but I'm like, oh, you could have had hundreds of more footnotes in this if you want to do, because I could tell you're just, you've read everything it seems like, you know, and yet you don't front that.

So it makes it really accessible. So thank you for your book. Encourage everybody to pick up a copy. Thanks so much for coming on The Algenarabo. My pleasure. Good to see you again. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.