[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome back to the Unison Church podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had a goal to come out of the podcast every month, and I am really struggling Really struggling this year already with said goal So here I am it's February 28th.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not a leap year and I'm recording this episode
[SPEAKER_00]: It kind of worked out though.
[SPEAKER_00]: It kind of worked out though because I am once again on a launch team for a book that I need to review and it comes out early March.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I lit a fire and went ahead and just plowed through this book the last
[SPEAKER_00]: week or two and my interview I actually had an interview scheduled and I was going to do this early March instead of at a February and it got snowed out.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's been snowing so much this year in Connecticut.
[SPEAKER_00]: So here we are, we're doing a book review and I'm really, I'm like really pumped for this one.
[SPEAKER_00]: Before we get started, I would suggest if you have not already.
[SPEAKER_00]: Go back, listen to episode 39.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was published in November.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a sermon that I preached in the summertime of last year, and it's called Mark's Intentional Use of the Female Disciples, parentheses, apostles' question mark of Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would really recommend listening to that sermon.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you have not already, go back, check it out, because it will inform this conversation.
[SPEAKER_00]: So here's the deal.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm on a launch team for another Preston's Wrinkle book.
[SPEAKER_00]: I follow him very closely, and so I get to be on his launch teams.
[SPEAKER_00]: I get to get advanced reader copies of his,
[SPEAKER_00]: books come through them and make reviews.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm excited.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm excited because I was really pumped for this book.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you follow him at all, you know that for the last three and change years, he's been studying a topic that has become rather important to me in area of study of my own.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so when I heard he was writing a book about it, I was excited.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me, let's do this, let's do this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Also, this is like a very off-the-cuff episode that I'm trying to keep under an hour.
[SPEAKER_00]: So bear with me as I try to do things to speed along the process.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you don't need a process.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, I got interested in this topic.
[SPEAKER_00]: because when I was growing up, I grew up my church has independent fundamental Baptist roots and sort of came out of that became, it's still as bad as in his name, but it's like so not Baptist even a little bit anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: And except that we still really love the Bible, but also
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just making that about just a scene to this, like, kind of not cool because there's a lot of different kinds of churches that love the Bible.
[SPEAKER_00]: But but anyway, we're in, we're in our church, whatever it is now.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it, you know, especially growing up, it was pretty.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, pretty, um, pretty fundamentalist.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so coming from that view, when I got to college, I went out of state.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was by myself.
[SPEAKER_00]: No family, friends around, nothing like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was looking for a church.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've shared a little bit about my church journey on this podcast with some of you guys who are aware of that, but the church I landed in was a church replant, it was a church or God church, their charismatic denomination, and which is a little different.
[SPEAKER_00]: We were honestly always theologically charismatic.
[SPEAKER_00]: It despite coming from like having an independent fundamental background, which is not usually very charismatic.
[SPEAKER_00]: We kind of were.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that wasn't really a big thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean there was a couple theological distinctions that were different when I was raised
[SPEAKER_00]: is that there were two pastors, and the two pastors were a husband and a wife, both of whom were ordained by the denomination, who preached, led music, it was actually really beautiful.
[SPEAKER_00]: They did everything together.
[SPEAKER_00]: Their skill sets were actually fairly similar.
[SPEAKER_00]: which is not normal for a pastoral team or even a husband and wife, but they were both in a music, both in a preaching, both into the pastoral care elements, and it was really beautiful to sit under them.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was truly a blessing to be there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Shout out to Chad and Debbie.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love those guys, and I should reach out to them.
[SPEAKER_00]: I should give them a text or a phone call, sometimes soon.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I love my time there, I really did.
[SPEAKER_00]: And for me, it was never an issue that there was a female pastor.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was like never a problem for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't even a problem for my parents who are a little more conservative.
[SPEAKER_00]: Especially that time coming out of the independent fundamental stuff had sort of happened mostly when I was in high school.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was still like a little bit new, I think, in a lot of ways.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, obviously it was a progression, but it was a little new, I think.
[SPEAKER_00]: and I just had a great, a great experience there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Didn't have a problem with it, whatever, it's all good.
[SPEAKER_00]: But since that time, sitting under a male and female pastor in the same church, I, at that time, would have been considered myself sort of soft-competarian, but began paying attention to.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is often how it happens, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: You have an experience or a question, a creeps up, it causes you to pay closer attention to certain things in scripture.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's what happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: I started really paying attention to verses that might indicate
[SPEAKER_00]: whether or not a woman could be an elder at a church.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, or pastor overseer preacher, there's a lot of different paths to it.
[SPEAKER_00]: We use the term elder to describe somebody who has spiritual authority in the church who's an elected officer of the church.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's kind of what we use in our context.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'll use the word elder here, but it could take along a lot of things.
[SPEAKER_00]: And some churches it might be a priest.
[SPEAKER_00]: Rabbi, or it could be even just simply a pastor and overseer, bishop, whatever it is, can women occupy all facets of church leadership, or some of them held off?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is really the key question.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, a few, what was it, two years ago?
[SPEAKER_00]: Two years ago, we were talking about, gosh, I don't even know what it was.
[SPEAKER_00]: don't remember what exactly the conversation was but we were we were doing a series where various members of the church leadership team were up on stage having sort of a conversational met a conversational message.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was answering questions a little bit like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so the different combinations were like, me and my father are the two pastors at our church.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so some of them were us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of them were one of us with one of our deacons.
[SPEAKER_00]: And one of them was me and my mother.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we were talking about some stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't like, I don't remember what we were talking about.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I remember, I have a very distinct memory that somehow
[SPEAKER_00]: a women preaching or women being elders came up and she she turned to me and said and this is going to color the conversation and then we're going to get into the book and she said to me
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we believe that women could can be pastors, just not the senior pastor.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's what we believe.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I, I remember I was like, oh, no, why are we saying this from the stage?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it's not true.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I had to step in and I had to clarify, I had to clarify.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, the church constitution says that women cannot hold the office of pastor.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the official statement from the church as he was like, oh, and then that I said, but my father is what's called a soft complementary, which means that as the male headship is still something that he sees as, as
[SPEAKER_00]: an option in the church and so the senior pastor whoever's on top which by the way isn't even our church leaders of structure with senior associate pastors but whatever the senior if there's a senior pastor they can they have to be male but a female could be a pastor they could speak they could do all that even be ordained as long as it's like under the headship of a of a of a man
[SPEAKER_00]: And she was like, oh, and then I said, but I am egalitarian, and believe that women can hold any church office.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's interesting because in my church, you have the three, well, really, it's not even quite the three.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's probably a fourth gradation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, maybe there's even more than that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But, but you have,
[SPEAKER_00]: from a constitutional standpoint, and a lot of this has to do with the gradual moving away from fundamentalism, my church has, but from a constitutional standpoint, we don't elect women to be pastors of the church.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then my father, who's a little bit more conservative than I am, is like, well, they can be pastors that can teach, but as always, there's a senior pastor who's a male.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then for me,
[SPEAKER_00]: fully egalitarian.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's kind of coloring like my experience, right, the world that I live in, as I come to this book.
[SPEAKER_00]: And even the fact that I have disagreement, both with my co-paster, but then also my church's constitution on this,
[SPEAKER_00]: I hope indicates to you that this is something that I've actually like thought about because I wouldn't take like a differing stance unless it was something that I was sort of convinced about, and so I want to be really clear, like upfront, I am an egalitarian, I have then for at least the last four or five years.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm going to share some of my thoughts as I walk through this book.
[SPEAKER_00]: But this book is called From Genesis to Junior, an honest search for what the Bible really says about women in leadership.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I said, it's by press and sprinkle I've reviewed his books before on the podcast because I get to be on his launch teams.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so here we go.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to walk through this thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: chapter by chapter.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to read you a quote.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to share some of my thoughts.
[SPEAKER_00]: But before we get into that, let me give you just sort of the quick review.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would give this book five stars.
[SPEAKER_00]: No questions asked.
[SPEAKER_00]: This book,
[SPEAKER_00]: was so good.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was so readable.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was so engaging.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was so well-studied.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a couple chapters in here, guys, that have so many.
[SPEAKER_00]: So okay, this is a footnote book.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's not like there's an end notes at the end.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a footnote book.
[SPEAKER_00]: As I was reading through and I don't know if it's just the arc or if it's this is how it's going to be published.
[SPEAKER_00]: I hope it's how it's going to be published.
[SPEAKER_00]: There were pages where there were more footnotes than words.
[SPEAKER_00]: in the actual body of the of the pros like so this is of this is definitely a research project I happen to know just from like following and listening to his other stuff That press has been working on this for the last like few years so if this is a big project It's a scholarly work, but it's written so well that I think even somebody who's like not into the Conversation could pick it up and track with it because it's written so well
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, he's just got a great gift for communicating really deep stuff in a way that's accessible and I love that, but he also gets really nerdy like almost every chapter has at least one word study on a Hebrew Greek.
[SPEAKER_00]: word.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're talking about extra biblical sources for figuring out what these words mean.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're connecting the dots between lots of different scriptures.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're weighing and counter-waying different ways of reading the text because he reserves his position on the issue until the very end of the book.
[SPEAKER_00]: Which I will probably spoil in this and that's this.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's just what it is, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: I got to give like a four of you of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's do it, let's do it, let's jump in.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this is a 10 chapter, but it's not really, because there's a kind of a lengthy intro and a lengthy outro as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we're gonna go through, where do you go through, I'm gonna read some quotes, some stuff like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Chapter 1, Adam and Eve and Genesis 1, 2, 3.
[SPEAKER_00]: I really enjoy this chapter.
[SPEAKER_00]: The first three chapters of Genesis, I think are the most impactful chapters of the scriptures that have shaped my theology.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I think it's really important.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot going on, and I really like the way that he handles everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he's looking at the relationship to Adam and Eve from Genesis 1 when humans are first created into Genesis 2 where there's a little bit more color added to the story about the creation of Adam and Eve.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that one's really important because Paul later in the New Testament is going to reference
[SPEAKER_00]: the incidents that happen in Genesis 2 and Genesis 3 of course is a story of the fall when Eve eats the fruit, hands it to Adam, Adam eats it and there's some words that are said about male female relationships in that chapter.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so my favorite quote from this chapter,
[SPEAKER_00]: is right here.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's important to realize that Preston is a new testament scholar.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so what that means is that his, I mean, he's very well-informed about the Tenak as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: But his primary contributions and his primary area of expertise is going to be the new testament.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so he, even as he's talking about the Tenak, is referencing some stuff in the new testament.
[SPEAKER_00]: because especially in this issue because Paul is going to like we said he's going to do some theology about what happens in Genesis 2 and Genesis chapter 3 and so he says that he makes this statement though it's on page 27 in the book it says the new testament intriguingly blames Adam exactly twice in Romans 5 12 to 9 and 1 Corinthians 15 22 and Eve exactly twice in 2 Corinthians 11 3 and 1 Timothy 2 14 in his discussion of original
[SPEAKER_00]: So he's actually quoting Blomberg there in his work commentary and perspective when he says that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I love that he brought that into the into this chapter.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's really cool that he has listed that because the sort of like popular
[SPEAKER_00]: description and I definitely heard this going up in like some very conservative circles is is that what happened one of the reasons why women can't be church leaders is because they were the ones like deceived by the serpent which he totally like undoes and that's such a lazy argument anyway and I haven't believed that for a really long time so that's not new information to me but it's a lazy argument it's a bad reading of Genesis and honestly it's a bit show of
[SPEAKER_00]: The question, though, the primary question that he's looking at here, is there any sort of coloration in Genesis, so it indicates that the man has authority over the woman, and the reality of the situation is, as you read the text, never does that happen until Genesis chapter three after the fall, and so it's interesting that we don't see any of that in God's original created design.
[SPEAKER_00]: And hold on to that, because we're going to talk about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: later in it as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: And one of the issues is that when Eva's created one of the words to describe the woman is the word A's there and it's the word that gets translated to help me and this is a word that I've studied a lot and I've tried to put some time into thinking about what that could mean and how it's used and things like I've done the word studies on it before and things like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And help me is the King James sort of translation, helper, something like that, maybe ally.
[SPEAKER_00]: I like, I like, some people have really said some really good things about that term, and I think what press and essay about it is really good too.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the reality is that nobody really knows what's happening.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I tend to read the term because most of the time the term is used as sort of like a rescuing aid.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so if that's a way to describe Eve, like, why is that?
[SPEAKER_00]: And I had an idea that's actually not in the book at all, but as I was reading it, I was like,
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not in the writing, but I wonder if Eve being Adam's azerre in Genesis 218 could refer to the coming deliverer who would come through the woman's seed in Genesis 3.
[SPEAKER_00]: 15.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like maybe it's like a prequel to this idea that deliverance from evil will come through the woman's seed and maybe that's why she's called azerre there.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, could be, could be.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it thought, like I said, I was going to share some thoughts about my own perspective here.
[SPEAKER_00]: But let's move on for now.
[SPEAKER_00]: In chapter two, it's women in the old testament.
[SPEAKER_00]: And while I tend to call the old testament that's not because I prefer it, I prefer to call it by its original name.
[SPEAKER_00]: and I don't love the word old in that he does a really good job of just walking through like when women appear in the Tenak what what kind of roles are they having and the reality is is that and this this is one of the strongest things that made me egalitarian is there are a lot of women in the Tenak that are leaders.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, he's very careful to say, just because somebody's a leader or even like a prophet or even like a queen, just because of that, doesn't necessarily mean that they're qualified to be an elder in the church, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's a great, I think that's very true.
[SPEAKER_00]: I agree with that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you can't get around and he doesn't.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't get around this idea that women were prophets, they were judges.
[SPEAKER_00]: um... they were key military leaders uh... they weren't officially queen but they there are several women who operated as such uh... there are definitely women that we'll did power in the tenac and there are women who we'll did not only political power but actually like religious power like power that uh... led people spiritually
[SPEAKER_00]: One of my favorite quotes from it's on page 62, it says, profits carried more authority than priests or even kings in ancient Israel.
[SPEAKER_00]: Profits were king makers and kingbreakers.
[SPEAKER_00]: They occupied the most authentic office, or the most authoritative office under the Mosaic covenant.
[SPEAKER_00]: And quote, I fully agree with that, and there are several female profits throughout the Tenak.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I love this last one I had to include.
[SPEAKER_00]: I cheated and I included two quotes from chapter two.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because at the end of the day, this is with reference to priesthood, because Israel did have an all-male priesthood.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I like the way that he deals with that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think it's really helpful.
[SPEAKER_00]: In addition to profit really being the one who's spiritually in charge of Israel, priests are really more worship leaders and people who clean and maintain the tabernacle and then later the temple.
[SPEAKER_00]: more so than they are, the primary religious leader, like profits are definitely the more powerful as we bring that quote.
[SPEAKER_00]: But here's what he says on page 63.
[SPEAKER_00]: At the end of the day, God's rationale for the all male priesthood doesn't actually contribute much to our debate for one simple reason.
[SPEAKER_00]: Under the new covenant,
[SPEAKER_00]: all believers men and women are priests.
[SPEAKER_00]: This doesn't mean all believers are qualified to be pastors and leaders.
[SPEAKER_00]: It just means that we can't appeal directly to Israel's all-male priesthood to exclude women from teaching and leading in churches today.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was a fantastic treatment of the issue.
[SPEAKER_00]: Chapter three is women in the ministry of Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: So again, he's a new testament scholar, he only spends two chapters.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's an honor.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure that there are other scholars who spend much more time in that's an honor as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I appreciate that he knows where his expertise is.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's what he's gonna write about.
[SPEAKER_00]: Women in the ministry of Jesus are the reason that I'm in egalitarian.
[SPEAKER_00]: full stop.
[SPEAKER_00]: I believe and you can go back and listen to that sermon and the title is a little provocative.
[SPEAKER_00]: I believe that that women during Jesus' ministry occupied the same level of authority as the 12 disciples.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think there were women who were apostles in that sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: Though the 12 are named and highlighted really as a proxy for the 12 tribes of Israel primarily, which is why their 12 men who start a new kingdom just like the 12 children of Jacob sort of started the nation of Israel.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's a symbolic thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: There were more apostles than just a 12 and other people are called apostles in the New Testament.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not really that radical.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think women are among those other people who are called apostles and therefore part of that initial push of the founders of the early church, which I mean, can you think of anything more?
[SPEAKER_00]: Spirit, so you authoritative than that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, women in the ministry of Jesus, here's my favorite quote on page 67, the gospel writers don't just include women as disciples of Jesus, rather they highlight women as exceptional disciples who emulated the kind of radical obedience Jesus expected, often in contrast to the faithfulness of men, especially the 12 apostles.
[SPEAKER_00]: So good, so good, there was a couple quotes from this one.
[SPEAKER_00]: Another one later, he talks about the seraphionation woman, who's the woman that Jesus calls it, dog, which is something I actually preached about recently in Mark.
[SPEAKER_00]: That woman who is seraphion, she's not even a Jewish woman, is described as one of only two people who have, quote unquote, great faith in Matthew.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's described Matthew 1528.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's on page 70.
[SPEAKER_00]: it says this.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the only story in Mark where someone seems to have rhetorically outmaneuvered Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus verbally sparred with a woman and to the shock and perhaps a fence of every ancient male reader.
[SPEAKER_00]: She won.
[SPEAKER_00]: And quote, I think Jesus considers the Sierra Venetian woman to be intellectually equal.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think this is important just I don't most people are not like they
[SPEAKER_00]: like good commentaries don't think that women are not intellectual or not skilled or not gifted by the spirit.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, that's not how most people are.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I do find on the pop level that sometimes there's some of that residual stuff hanging around and just there's no room for that in scripture, whether you're a commentary or a y'all theorem.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, here's another quote on page 84.
[SPEAKER_00]: I also think it's safe to say that the gospel's depict women as exemplary preachers of the divine word of men.
[SPEAKER_00]: Two men, Elizabeth Mary, Anna, the Samaritan woman, and the woman who witnessed the resurrection of Jesus, especially Mary Magdalene, all proclaim messages about Jesus to a community of often fragile and faithless men.
[SPEAKER_00]: End quote.
[SPEAKER_00]: his his treatment of Elizabeth Mary and Anna was very striking to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've actually never heard that argument, but guys, the gospel doesn't have sermons from people other than Jesus except for Elizabeth Mary and Anna.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like they get a lot of time alongside Jesus and at the least I think
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, on par and important enough to be included in a book where it's mostly Jesus teaching pretty pretty good pretty good.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I would invite you to, you know, go back and listen to my treatment of Mark 10, which really becomes like the foundation for a lot of the stuff he's going to say later in the book.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so episode 39.
[SPEAKER_00]: I preach on that.
[SPEAKER_00]: We read that text the same.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I would, I would invite you to check it out.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, chapter four, leaders, and leadership in the early church, Mark 10 describes a servant leadership that says to be greatest in the kingdom and that word like greatest in the context that Jesus is talking about in Mark 10 is to have ruling authority because James and John and their mom, they want to be right and left hand to Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we're talking about exercising authority in the kingdom.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus says,
[SPEAKER_00]: The ones who do that the most once you are greatest are actually the ones who are the slave of all in Mark chapter 10 and so he spends a whole chapter just saying look this is what leadership means and so We shouldn't look for higher article leadership
[SPEAKER_00]: when this is actually what Jesus is looking for, which I really liked that perspective.
[SPEAKER_00]: He highlighted a couple of things in Paul, and he's not only a New Testament's wife, he's a Pauline scholar, so this makes sense that he's gonna be talking about Paul mostly.
[SPEAKER_00]: From here on out,
[SPEAKER_00]: He points out that in 1st Corinthians 16, it references people who joined the work of Paul, as those who should be submitted to in the Christian Church.
[SPEAKER_00]: And while this phrase is a noun, sooner goss, it's the word that Paul uses to describe his co-workers, oftentimes at the end of his letters.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he identifies the 16 of these people who are co-workers, three of whom are women.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then on top of that, there are four female heads of households, which heads of households were important because they hosted the church.
[SPEAKER_00]: And while it doesn't come out and explicitly say they were leaders, it is kind of likely that they might have been looked to as leaders as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: And four of them are women as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he includes
[SPEAKER_00]: he includes their references.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's Mary in Acts 12, 12, Nympha, I think, in Colossians 415, Lydia in Acts 16, 15 and 40, and Priscilla and Aquila in Romans 16, 3, to 5, 1st Corinthians 16, 19.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just thought it was really interesting that, and again, this is actually one of the main things that convinced me of egalitarian as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: The women in Jesus' ministry with a primary thing, the secondary thing was both in the Tanakh and in the New Testament.
[SPEAKER_00]: Regardless of what you think your theology is, it's very hard to argue that there are women doing things that at minimum at least look like spiritual leadership.
[SPEAKER_00]: And look like spiritual leadership in a mixed sex contact with men and women present.
[SPEAKER_00]: Regardless of what you think theologically about the issue, it's very hard to dispute that in the text.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I really do, I think the burden of proof is on the people that say, oh, they weren't spiritual leaders and they can't have been.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I think the plain reading is actually, oh, there are women doing the same stuff that men are doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe less women than men, but there are women doing
[SPEAKER_00]: similar things to what the men are doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I think the actually the plain reading of the text is to say, oh, of course, that they can be leaders just like men can because they're present doing the things.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are prophets, there are teachers, there are people opening their homes to the church.
[SPEAKER_00]: All of that stuff is happening.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's very hard to dispute that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the burden
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, the complimentarian side to convince me that what they're doing is not church leadership when even though the same words use for what they're doing are used of men and we just assume that they're church leaders.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's that's kind of where my head is at and he's still working through the passages.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now the most important texts.
[SPEAKER_00]: for the early church with reference to can women be leaders in the church?
[SPEAKER_00]: Can they occupy all offices?
[SPEAKER_00]: Are found in Paul and there are a couple of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: But before we get to them, there's a whole chapter on women in the Ministry of Paul.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's chapter five.
[SPEAKER_00]: And one of the, one of the quotes from that that I really enjoyed was this one, the fact that Paul uses, I believe it's Capio, a word used of several women by Paul throughout the rest of the new testament to describe the ministry of church leaders and never wanted to describe the ministry of non-lears is significant.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then later on, a couple pages
[SPEAKER_00]: including Phoebe and Roman 1612, is a church leader, and quote.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there are these words that Paul is using to describe people that we would very obviously say our church leaders, and then they're a use of women, and there are some who say, well, he can't possibly be calling them leaders in the church.
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, I just think that highlights,
[SPEAKER_00]: just kind of the issue with it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, okay, he's using the same words.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what does that mean?
[SPEAKER_00]: But even at this point, Preston's like very hesitant.
[SPEAKER_00]: He hasn't come out and said, what he is.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because like I said, there's some passages that are tough, that sometimes, sometimes catch people up.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that was chapter five.
[SPEAKER_00]: Women with Paul, chapter six is female profits in the New Testament.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is not super new, it was a short chapter, it's not super new information.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've kind of already been there, but I feel like you wanted to dedicate a chapter just to listing the female profits.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in the new testament and talking about what they were doing, there's a quote in here.
[SPEAKER_00]: I only wrote down one quote from the chapter.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm page 169.
[SPEAKER_00]: The new testament never makes a distinction between male profits who carried authority and female ones who didn't.
[SPEAKER_00]: And quote, just think that's great.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a really good quote.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so for chapter 7 through 10, 7, 8, 9, and 10, he's going to deal with the passages that are often cited and disputed over the course of this, the argument, sort of between common materials and egalitarians.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm very sympathetic with this because they are admittedly very difficult passages.
[SPEAKER_00]: Two of them come from second Corinthians.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of them comes from Ephesians 5.
[SPEAKER_00]: And one of them comes from first Timothy.
[SPEAKER_00]: First Timothy is not a book that I have spent a ton of time with.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, obviously I've read it several times, probably preach from it at some point.
[SPEAKER_00]: However, first Corinthians and Ephesians 5 are both passages, first Corinthians is a whole book that I've spent a lot of time in.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I was actually really excited to jump in and see
[SPEAKER_00]: where he's going to land on some of these issues, as somebody who's spent a lot of time in first Corinthians especially, but also Ephesians 5, these are hard, hard passages.
[SPEAKER_00]: They are not easy.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so up to this point, both he and an eye, although I've already laid my card in the table, have been like, yes, obviously women can do this stuff, men can do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously, they occupy roles of religious leadership, spiritual authority, over men, children, women, anybody in the church, obviously they're doing this.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then you get to some of these passages, and it's like, what did he just say?
[SPEAKER_00]: If they're already doing this, why did he say that?
[SPEAKER_00]: is something going on wrong?
[SPEAKER_00]: Are they doing this?
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's not like being sanctified?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like are there women leading and teaching and doing these like that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that like a secondary option?
[SPEAKER_00]: And maybe this is the way it's supposed to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're really hard passages.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think if you just read the words, and maybe this is even an overstatement.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hmm, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's got some really good arguments.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're gonna get it to him.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think if you just read the words, sometimes it's easy to be like, oh, this is why complimentarians are commentarian because he says this.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there might be more going on beneath the surface.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so he jumps in and he spends full chapters and guys, they're long chapters.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're like a little bit of a slog to get through.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I'm so glad that they exist because he takes time not only to unpack it, he offers potential explanations for them from other scholars.
[SPEAKER_00]: He quotes them.
[SPEAKER_00]: He spends time with both sides of the argument.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then he goes in and says, I went back and I read him for myself.
[SPEAKER_00]: I read the original sources for myself.
[SPEAKER_00]: I read them outside and Greek other Greek sources.
[SPEAKER_00]: I engaged with other scholars about this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's what I found.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was really cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was like, here's the two ways of reading the passage.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's what I did and landed on.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's now after that, what I think is a good interpretation of this, and by the way, hold it with home and hand, because these are hard passages.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've really loved the posture and the tone, and I think this book is worth having.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just for that, just for the last four chapters, because you could go to each one of those chapters and now have a really in-depth, really comprehensive's not the right word, because there's like thousands and thousands of pages written on all these verses, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: But a great summary, and I think relatively unbiased like everybody's biased, but I think relatively unbiased reading of it from him as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's look at each one of these and I sort of wanna read them.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I have an NIV in front of me that we're gonna read some of these verses in.
[SPEAKER_00]: So chapter seven says marriage, headship and submission, Ephesians 5, 21, through 33.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let me get into this.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a spicy one.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have red and heard many, many, many, many things on Ephesians chapter five.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I myself actually recently read this in a marriage counseling session.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think it's a beautiful passage, but I also think it opens up a lot of cans of worms so to speak.
[SPEAKER_00]: So here we go, Ephesians 5, 21 to 33, and the NIV says.
[SPEAKER_00]: Excuse me.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, Mitz and one another out of reverence for Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: Wives submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands
[SPEAKER_00]: Husbands love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.
[SPEAKER_00]: To make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water, stay in a wrinkle or any other – oh, throughout the word – and to present her to himself as a radiant church without staying in a wrinkle or any other blemish.
[SPEAKER_00]: But holy and blameless.
[SPEAKER_00]: In this same way, Husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies.
[SPEAKER_00]: He loves his wife, loves himself.
[SPEAKER_00]: After all, no one ever hated his own body, but they feed and care for their body just as Christ says the church.
[SPEAKER_00]: For we are members of his body.
[SPEAKER_00]: For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.
[SPEAKER_00]: this is a profound mystery, but I'm talking about Christ and the church.
[SPEAKER_00]: However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself and the wife must respect her husband.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's just an example of what I was saying at the beginning that Paul in these passages is going to quote from the Tenak in this case Genesis 2 24.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in a text, I believe, in a text that is overwhelmingly positive about the role of women and about the equality of men and women, I believe that that's the most honest reading of the Tenak.
[SPEAKER_00]: What Paul is saying sometimes almost seems like contrary to that, like he's interpreting it in a very different way.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's get into it, a lot of Ephesians 5, the section on that has to do with the word head, because this is husband, is the head of the wife, which is the word Keffelay.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a tough word, it's a really hard word to understand and a lot of the argument about what this passage mean has to do with that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I'm going to give you a critique of the book, actually.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love this book.
[SPEAKER_00]: I already gave it five stars.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it was a fantastic book.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of my questions after it, and I would love to have the opportunity.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I will have the opportunity to ask him this question.
[SPEAKER_00]: He actually comes up and says, if you study this word throughout all like Greek language and stuff, it does seem that the word Kefilai, so Hussman is high the wife.
[SPEAKER_00]: The word Kefilai does actually have a connotation of authority in it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so my big question for him that he never answers is, what does that mean in the marriage that the man is the head of the woman?
[SPEAKER_00]: And what would that mean in a context where like your wife was a pastor?
[SPEAKER_00]: And the husband was not.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, and would that be like a threat is is the husband having authority in the marriage something that's intrinsic to this passage or is it just kind of like descriptive of the way that most marriages worked at that time or the way that man men acted in society and does that actually have bearing on
[SPEAKER_00]: on this conversation, that never really gets answered, and I would love to know his perspective from that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, press it if you're listening, love to have an answer on that, man, it would be really cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think there's much more mutuality.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think it's hard to not read this past hour.
[SPEAKER_00]: Much more mutuality than there is hierarchy in this passage.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he also highlights that the word for body and this is the word soma and Greek.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so here's a quote on page 190 from him.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a little bit of a long one.
[SPEAKER_00]: So hang with it.
[SPEAKER_00]: This rhetorical movement of soma, meaning body, from partitive to unitive.
[SPEAKER_00]: Corresponds to Paul's redeph initiative, Keffelay, in terms of self-sacrificial service that we saw earlier.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's as if Paul meets his audience where they're at in 522-24 and then takes them on a journey towards mutuality and interdependence in verses 25 to 32.
[SPEAKER_00]: Something he's already hinted at in verse 21.
[SPEAKER_00]: Paul's treatment of marriage is not too far from what he says in 1 Corinthians 7-4.
[SPEAKER_00]: The wife does not have authority over her own body, but yields as to her husband.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body, but yields it to his wife.
[SPEAKER_00]: End quote.
[SPEAKER_00]: Twice, because he's quoting 1 Corinthians 7-4 there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so he sort of sees a journey in this from wives submit to your husbands in verse 22 that by the end of it, it's like love your wife as you love yourself and the wife also must respect her husband that kind of ties back in it's like a sandwich with 21 that says submit to one another with Reverend Scresne.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's submit to one another.
[SPEAKER_00]: I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I,
[SPEAKER_00]: The submits to one another, it's interesting.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm looking at the NIV, which the one that I'm actually looking at is the upside-down kingdom Bible, which is his, he was a general editor of the study Bible.
[SPEAKER_00]: The chapter division for this is one that's like highly debated, like where the section division and whether 21 belongs with the previous material or this material.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's definitely like a linking thing and it has an active verb that stays active for the entirety.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think it probably.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, but the one and other in that is really more about people that are in the church together than it is about the husband and wife and the husband and wife is kind of just like one example and the rest of this is going to be one example of what it looks like to submit to each other like we should submit to each other in the church.
[SPEAKER_00]: So,
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so it's interesting, I guess that this is a really hard passage, but I do agree because I see much more mutuality than I see in the words of that quote, partitive versus unitive.
[SPEAKER_00]: I see much more unitive than I see partitive here, but I do see them both, and so I think it's still a tough passage, and I would love to know,
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, we know where he thinks about what he thinks about with reference to like he's gonna land, complimentary or egalitarian by the end of this book.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we know that, but what does it mean in a marriage because that's kind of the primary?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, this is a primary, I don't know, because he says it's a mystery that I'm talking about Christ in the church.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's interesting.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's got some really cool stuff to say even about this idea where it says for this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and how actually in culture the wife left her father and mother to become part of the husband's household.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, so why here is it like the man will leave his father mother become he died to his wife.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's it's all like a reversal.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's good and even like the this one here that the husband should submit to the wife.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even like Chrysler's insurance to the point of death is also a reversal because clearly it's it's going to be her who gets more exalted by this passage.
[SPEAKER_00]: it's so tough.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's such a tough passage.
[SPEAKER_00]: It really, it's a tough passage.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think first the first Corinthians passes are actually easier.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ephesians arrive.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think Ephesians five is pretty hard.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's the hardest one, actually personally, myself.
[SPEAKER_00]: He does it at first because I actually kind of feel like he thought it was the easiest one, ending with first Timothy, which is, which is tough.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it is tough.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think it's as tough as this one, though.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, moving into first Corinthians.
[SPEAKER_00]: Two passages in first Corinthians.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think they relate to each other as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: First Corinthians 11 is about head coverings.
[SPEAKER_00]: First Corinthians 14 is about judging prophecy.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so first Corinthians 11, three to 12, we actually went over this a little bit in a previous podcast series on first Corinthians.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you'd like to, jump in there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here we go, first Corinthians 11 3, but I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, the head of every woman is man.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the head of Christ is God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered, dishonors his head, but every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered, dishonors her head.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is the same as having her head shaved.
[SPEAKER_00]: For if a woman does not cover her head, she might as well have her hair cut off.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if it is a disgrace for a woman to have her hair cut off,
[SPEAKER_00]: A man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: But women, woman is the glory of man.
[SPEAKER_00]: For men did not come from women, but women from men.
[SPEAKER_00]: Either was man created for women, but women from men.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is for this reason that a woman ought to have authority over her own head because of the angels.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nevertheless, in the Lord, woman is not dependent of man, nor is man independent of woman.
[SPEAKER_00]: Woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of woman.
[SPEAKER_00]: For as women came from man, so also man is more than woman.
[SPEAKER_00]: For everything comes from God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I love this passage.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's so good.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's such a good, it's a good passage.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a really good package.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's a deal.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love this quote from him.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's really good page 210.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's apparently something about verses, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: First Corinthians 117 to 10, or perhaps 113 to 10 is a whole that is not quote in the Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: While verses 11 to 12 offer a perspective that is quote in the Lord and quote.
[SPEAKER_00]: People are, do not understand first grade.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's a hard book.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to say that it's an easy book.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, I don't want to say that I have all the answers about it either.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the things that makes first Corinthians difficult to read is that Paul seems to like contradict himself sometimes in the book.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think what we're reading in first Corinthians.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, we know that it's a response to certain questions that the Corinthians had.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we already know that it's midway through the correspondence between Paul and the Corinthians.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is not his first letter, it's not his last letter.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's midway in between it, but this is the one that we have and that is preserved.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's something about that special.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the things that Paul is doing in this letter, as he's dealing with the Corinthian questions, is he's chewing on his response.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's mulling over the problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's testing different answers to the questions as we read it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then he's arriving on some kind of conclusion, theoretically, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's not always clear in the book when he is thinking through an issue and when he has arrived at a,
[SPEAKER_00]: full response for the issue.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like sometimes he's like mid-thought and if you catch a mid-thought, you get something that doesn't quite sound right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the challenge of unraveling first Corinthians is finding out where are those middle thoughts and where are those concluding thoughts?
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's how I would describe exageting first Corinthians.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a really hard book to read.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think once you take that framework for interpreting first Corinthians, things they become more obvious.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Paul's thinking about head coverings.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's walking through, I think he's chewing on
[SPEAKER_00]: The idea of like, should women cover their hair?
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, ultimately, he says women should cover their hair.
[SPEAKER_00]: So culturally, women having their heads uncovered at this time would have been a sign of her looking to get sexually active with other men.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's just a cultural thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hair, I mean, it still is, very sexy, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: But especially back then, hair was very sexy.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, he ultimately says you should cover your hair.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think most people, including Kaufman Terriens, agree that that's a cultural thing, because 99.9% of us are not making women wear head coveries in church, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So most of us agree with that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what's really confusing is this whole like, women is a Gloria, man, man is a Gloria of God, men were created first, all the stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so he's chatting about all this stuff,
[SPEAKER_00]: But in verse 11, it says, nevertheless, in the Lord, and then he makes a comment, women is not independent of man, man's not independent of woman, for as women came from man, so also man is born of woman.
[SPEAKER_00]: But everything comes from God.
[SPEAKER_00]: The conclusion of the matter is even though Paul will say practically, yes, women should wear a head covering.
[SPEAKER_00]: By the way, when they're prophesying, he's making provision for them to speak authoritative
[SPEAKER_00]: words to the church and says, you should cover your head when you do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So don't even get me started on that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, just read the passage.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sorry.
[SPEAKER_00]: While he is doing this, he gets to place where he says, never the last.
[SPEAKER_00]: So even though I said all the other stuff, nevertheless, in the Lord, like, here's the answer, in the Lord, many women are an
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I think, at the end of the day, he's like, yes, practically women should cover their hair.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's not a value statement.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I would even say it's not like a spiritual gifting statement.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not a qualifier about who is the head of who.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just a way it is practically, but yet men and women are totally 100% equal, including maybe in the act of prophesying which was spiritually authoritative.
[SPEAKER_00]: OK, OK, we got to move on.
[SPEAKER_00]: First Corinthians 14 talks about prophecies and disorder in the church and people are talking over each other and every is trying to be a prophetic word at the same time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Paul says, hey, when somebody else is talking, shut your mouth.
[SPEAKER_00]: like don't talk over somebody else is really the biggest thing in the passage, but in verse 34 it says this, women should remain silent in churches.
[SPEAKER_00]: They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission as the law says.
[SPEAKER_00]: If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home for it is disgrace for a woman to speak in church.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a tough passage because when you read it, it hits you like a ton of bricks, because it sounds so jarring and so wrong, especially to us, but I think even then it would have sounded jarring and wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so he spends a whole chapter, man or women be silent in all the churches, chapter nine.
[SPEAKER_00]: First Corinthians 14, 34 to 35.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is important.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think, okay, first thing, this one's for me, in first Corinthians chapter 11, Paul is indisputably making allowance for a women to prophesy in church.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's saying, yeah, put the head covering on when you prophesy.
[SPEAKER_00]: He doesn't say stop prophesy, he says, put the head covering on when you prophesy.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's making a provision so that women can successfully bring a prophecy before the church.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when he says,
[SPEAKER_00]: women be silent in church.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's not saying that literally.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what I mean by literally is the English word silent.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like maybe the Greek word silent means something different than the English word silent or maybe he's using that word intentionally hint hint at what's coming.
[SPEAKER_00]: He cannot be saying women should not talk in church.
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, commentarians don't think that that's what's happening either, because again, we're not making all the women that come into our congregations, not talk.
[SPEAKER_00]: That would be crazy, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So we know that there's a cultural element there already.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think, again, this is like a hint.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, that once we have to make that cultural qualification for a passage, the entire passage itself becomes open for cultural clarification.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so unless you're going to take the passage super mega hyper, literally, and every woman in your congregation is silent from the moment they step in the door to the moment they leave, and they're supposed to be wearing a head covering, you've got to give concession to the passage that it might not mean what it immediately seems to mean.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what press and unpacks is that like every single word in this sentence about like women should remain silent.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're not allowed to speak.
[SPEAKER_00]: They must be in submission.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, if they were to inquire about something they should ask their husbands, right, uh, disgraceful for a woman.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like those words that kind of like make it happen have actually been appearing through the previous words as well, which are very obvious about disorderly prophecy and how when somebody else speaking you shouldn't speak.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, you should be silent.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, my gosh.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's what it says.
[SPEAKER_00]: Page 237.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was honestly a bit shocked when I found that all key terms in 1434 to 35 are used throughout the chapter.
[SPEAKER_00]: It makes good sense to interpret these words in light of their immediate context, which is all about disorderly speech and conduct and quote.
[SPEAKER_00]: I truly believe
[SPEAKER_00]: If you were to place a robot, like a brand new baby AI that has yet to be trained on like the internet and cultural Christianity, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: A baby AI that's just reading the words and analyzing them data, I don't think it would spit out.
[SPEAKER_00]: that women aren't allowed to talk at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because when Paul says like, they should be in submission, they should be silent.
[SPEAKER_00]: He just used those words to talk about sitting and listening to another prophecy without talking over them.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think if you were to read it actually plainly, like in its context, like read the whole thing, you might arrive at this idea that they are,
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that they're not supposed to interrupt.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, there's supposed to let people have their turn basically is what the first is about.
[SPEAKER_00]: And perhaps he turns towards women because something in Corinth that there were women not doing that, maybe I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is probably the biggest area for me that actually changed in reading this book because that's a really strong way to read the passage.
[SPEAKER_00]: I really liked that way and I had not done the linking of words to the previous paragraph in that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the way that I interpreted the chapter is that the word used for women, it can also mean, like, wife.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I thought, okay, husband and wife both going to church, the husband and
[SPEAKER_00]: brings a prophecy, the woman, you know, his wife can't be involved in judging the prophecy because their unity and marriage is more important than her being a part of judging that prophecy.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's how I interpret the passage before.
[SPEAKER_00]: But actually, this is a much stronger interpretation of that passage.
[SPEAKER_00]: I like it a lot more.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's more honest with the immediate context.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that is something that I really, actually, really liked.
[SPEAKER_00]: I really liked that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I also neglected to mention that I did have a slight critique of something in chapter 8.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to not talk about it though because it's a little technical and I just don't think we have time to really get into it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I might send a message to person about it because I was kind of like a little struck by it and so I would love to I would love to dialogue further on that.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, chapter 10, the last one, and admittedly, it was quite a long chapter, and I will not spend a ton of time on it because first Timothy is not a book in the New Testament that I have a ton of experience with.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I want to be, I just kind of want to share what his thoughts were read it and get there.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we're talking, chapter 10, women teaching and authority.
[SPEAKER_00]: First Timothy, two to three.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're actually not going to read the whole thing because that's that's two two whole chapters, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think it is, I think it's good.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's important.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would say, let's go, okay, let's read this.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll read chapter two verse 11.
[SPEAKER_00]: two chapter three, verse three.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: A woman should learn in quietness and full submission.
[SPEAKER_00]: I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man.
[SPEAKER_00]: She must be quiet.
[SPEAKER_00]: For Adam was formed first, then Eve, and Adam was not the one deceived.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was the woman who has deceived and became a sinner.
[SPEAKER_00]: But women will be saved through childbearing if they continue in faith love and holiness with propriety.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's a trustworthy saying, whoever aspires to be an overseer, desires a noble task.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, the overseer is to be above reproach faithful to his wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not given to drunkenness, not violent, but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll actually keep going a little bit.
[SPEAKER_00]: He must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him, and he must do so in a manner worthy of full respect.
[SPEAKER_00]: If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God's church?
[SPEAKER_00]: He must receive, he must not be a recent convert or he may become conceded and fall into the same judgment as the devil.
[SPEAKER_00]: He must also have a good reputation with the outsiders so that he will not fall into disgrace
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so right there, the end of two has to do with women learning and quietness and submission.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then he goes right into, he launches right into qualifications of the overseer and he lists a bunch of good qualities that we should look for in Christian leaders.
[SPEAKER_00]: So really interesting, let's talk about that chapter two for a second.
[SPEAKER_00]: The word I have, I have a little something about that, but let's read a quote first from page 260, says this, Paul's emphasis on this humble posture to nine to 12, in contrast to the secular hierarchy implied by Authentaine, which is the word to have authority over men.
[SPEAKER_00]: Suggest that he's concerned with how women teach, not whether they teach.
[SPEAKER_00]: and quote.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me read that again because there's a lot going on in there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Paul's emphasis on this humble posture in contrast to the secular hierarchy implied by often-tain suggest that he's concerned with how women teach, not whether they teach, and quote.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he does a big study on the word Authentine, which is used when it says to have youth authority over a man.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I actually think this is a really good translation of that word authority over.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can think of like what Jesus says in Mark 10, he's like secular leaders, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: The Gentiles.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Gentile rulers lord over.
[SPEAKER_00]: other people.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let it not be so among you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ultimately, his interpretation of Authentaine, which there is disagreement about, by the way, in scholarship, how to interpret that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But ultimately, he goes through, and he lists for you the different areas in an extra biblical Greek literature that talk about Authentaine, and it's most often used to refer to the master's slave relationship.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus says, let that kind of authority, not be spoken over the church.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not the kind of authority that should exist here.
[SPEAKER_00]: In First Timothy, we're in Ephesus, where Timothy is pastoring.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there is the Ephesus Colt, the Artemis Colt, very active in there, which may be an example and teach and encourage women to take that kind of authority over a man.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was kind of like a very
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, I don't even know very like power hungry version of sort of these like power women who were like priests to Artemis is an Artemis was sort of a patron he was she was the patron god of Eversus and And it even had to do with shot like she was the people who saved She was the person who saved women from dying in childbirth, which is a very common way to go In the first century and maybe that's even why that's referenced as well
[SPEAKER_00]: And so Paul might be in this passage, primarily concerned with tugging away this image of really dumb and nearing leadership that like Artemis called followers and even early like Converte Scresciani who came from that exercised to a more Jesus-focused service-oriented thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: that gets me about this passage is, and he goes over it as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: It says, I do not permit a woman to teach or assume authority over a man.
[SPEAKER_00]: She must be quiet, that's first 12.
[SPEAKER_00]: Verse 13, four, Adam was formed first, then Eve.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ooh, and then Adam was deceived.
[SPEAKER_00]: Was not the one to deceive.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was women who has deceived, I became a center.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: That four does like a lot of work.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a Greek, the Greek is Gar.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that the word Gar, it does a lot of work because it could mean either because or it could mean four example.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he kind of details this in this chapter.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, do you think it's because or for example, it's hard.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's different people interpret it in different ways.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I wrote down something that I thought of, that could the guy in 2014, this is my words, not his, to be, is it meant to be an illustration of what happens when a woman takes authentic authority and winds up in a bad place?
[SPEAKER_00]: Eve ceases the fruit.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that could possibly have correlation to the domineering authority conveyed by the word often taken in 2012.
[SPEAKER_00]: The story of Scripture, the story of the Tenak, yes, the overarching story of the Tenak is.
[SPEAKER_00]: Eve sees the fruit.
[SPEAKER_00]: She sees that it's good for eating and she takes it and that we're take the word sees.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd like to, she sees is the fruit.
[SPEAKER_00]: She sees that it's good.
[SPEAKER_00]: She sees it for the rest of the Bible, the Hebrew Bible, various people see something with their eyes and take it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's the problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: That literally is by definition sin.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna get away from what God says is good.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna use my eyes to see that something else is good.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna take control, I'm gonna seize it, and I'm gonna take it for myself.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is the definition, the tenocks definition of what went wrong in the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: What continues to go wrong in our world today is this, we do what is right in our own eyes.
[SPEAKER_00]: We see something, we want it, we take it.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is the definition of sin.
[SPEAKER_00]: Could it be that Paul in first Timothy is drawing a parallel between Eve seeing something and taking it?
[SPEAKER_00]: as a for instance, this is what happens when women have authentic domineering style authority overmen.
[SPEAKER_00]: Eve did the same thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: She often tamed that situation.
[SPEAKER_00]: She had domineering authority.
[SPEAKER_00]: She took the fruit.
[SPEAKER_00]: She ate it and she gave it to her husband, who's with her and he ate it too.
[SPEAKER_00]: If Gar could be translated, for instance, I think the use of Adam and Eve there could be like, in example, this is what it looks like when things go wrong, when we're domineering about our authority.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like Eve was in the garden.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not his words.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's my words.
[SPEAKER_00]: As I was reading it, I was like, hmm, that's a really interesting way to read that passage.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it might be right.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: People might disagree with me, but that's sort of where I landed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, again, when we get into this and we talk about things in the end of chapter 2, there are words that he uses that Preston draws out that have been used in the entire book of First Timothy.
[SPEAKER_00]: things like false doctrines, myths and genealogies, marriage and procreation, misuses of wealth, using Moses's law to justify things that it shouldn't.
[SPEAKER_00]: False teaching and the targeting of women are all things that Paul talks about elsewhere in First Timothy.
[SPEAKER_00]: So just like with 1st Corinthians 14,
[SPEAKER_00]: It's worth saying the immediate context of this is actually about the false teaching that Paul is trying to extricate the Ephesian church from in first Timothy.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he did a really good job drawing out where exactly those are.
[SPEAKER_00]: So again,
[SPEAKER_00]: such a great resource, such a great resource, because if you're ever studying that passage, it's like, let me open this up and see how things connect, exegetically, to the rest of the book.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's so good.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that really does make the book super worth it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't write down any quotes from this, but just this idea that,
[SPEAKER_00]: that husband of one wife in chapter three when listed in the the qualifiers for a male male only ownership there that that is like male only and now I don't we don't even need to talk about it it's it's not it I don't think it's amazing I don't I don't I don't know that it's that creative of argument like it's probably more descriptive than it is prescriptive it's not
[SPEAKER_00]: just because you're describing like like one woman man, which is what that phrase means, one woman man doesn't have to literally mean one woman man.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it could mean one spouse, person, just as easily as I could mean one woman man.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, um,
[SPEAKER_00]: out maybe somebody people would fight that on me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll say right now in my own church, we have a section because right after the passage that I read, they give the provisions for deacons, even in my church was just technically commentary on paper.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have a provision in our constitution that says, hey,
[SPEAKER_00]: when in Deacans, it says that their wives, the Deacans wives must also be, you know, respectable and all those things, that word can mean women.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so even though Deacans are said to be husbands of one wife, just like the overseers are previously, we actually see that women can be Deacans too.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we have female Deacans actually half of our Deacans right now are women and half of them are men.
[SPEAKER_00]: So even,
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, in a commentary in church, like the one where I passed her, we have a provision that says, it's not literal, um, there.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think we could just as easily apply the same logic to the beginning of chapter three when talking about overseers as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not that controversial from my setting.
[SPEAKER_00]: It might be for others.
[SPEAKER_00]: But
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's go from there.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to, I don't want to spend so much time on exactly where he lands.
[SPEAKER_00]: What I'm going to do is I'm going to read you a quote.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's from the conclusion.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you guys can go and pick up the book and read it for yourself.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was quite good.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would recommend it as a read.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just going to, it might take a little time because it was very detailed.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think it's a great resource, fantastic resource, in fact, and I would highly recommend.
[SPEAKER_00]: that you get your hands on a copy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here it is, page 296, kind of a long book.
[SPEAKER_00]: 296, here it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think men miss out when we don't sit under the teaching of godly and gifted women, whose maturity and wisdom is shaped by their unique experience as women, and equaled.
[SPEAKER_00]: that's a great way to wrap this up.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love this book.
[SPEAKER_00]: I took 13 pages of notes.
[SPEAKER_00]: It got me thinking as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I was one of my favorite things about the book is that yeah, I was able to sort of ingest his scholarship on the topic.
[SPEAKER_00]: But in walking through them, it got my own juices flowing on the topic too.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's an area of study that I've already been interested.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm even more interested now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I feel like I learn new things.
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like I had a really enjoyable time with it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I hope that you, as well, will read and judge us to think about the topic.
[SPEAKER_00]: And maybe we'll be talking about this some more.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not gonna make any promises, because I still have some interviews lined up from our previous series.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it could be that we'll be talking about the topic more later.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you guys so much for listening.
[SPEAKER_00]: I hope this has been helpful for you, and I hope that you're enjoying some of these book reviews.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I have at least one more coming up this year, that one I'll do probably with a guest, though.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, enjoy.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you can, go out, pick up a copy from Genesis to Junior by Preston Sprinkle.
[SPEAKER_00]: Definitely worth the read, worth the time, and worth your engagement.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll talk to you real soon in the next episode.