Winger Video 4: Women Elders and Deacons

I have been slowly watching Mike Winger's 13 video (45 hour) craziness. I hate to say that I'm only about 7 hours in. Sigh.

Here are the previous posts and videos.

1. His introductory video: my blog post.and video response
2.1 His material on Genesis 1: my blog post and video response
2.2 His material on Genesis 2-3: my blog post on Gen 2 and video response to both Genesis 2-3 
3. Women in the Old Testament: my blog post and my video response

Now for his two hour video on the question of whether women were elders or deacons in the early church.
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1. There are a couple aspects to Winger's videos that I find problematic. One is the atomization of the biblical text. This is the playground of fundamentalism and it is quite misleading. Fundamentalism fights its battles in the minutia -- which of course goes along with its frequent missing the big picture. Clobber verses are used to undermine the weighty principles of Scripture -- just like the Pharisees pictured in Matthew 23.

For example, he begins this two hour extravaganza with Nympha in Colossians 4. Rather than move from the clear to the unclear, he starts with the obscure. This is because, as he admits in the middle of the video, he is in the end arguing for a complementarian position. So the most effective rhetorical technique is to begin with the claim that egalitarians are overreading obscure texts. Then by the time he gets to the points he agrees with, they have long lost any credibility.

My second complaint is that he spends most of his time deconstructing extreme egalitarian comments. It reminds me of the creation debates I went to in high school where I just wanted Henry Morris and Duane Gish to get to the evidence for creationism. They seemed to spend a lot more time quoting evolutionists. I would agree that many of the things Winger quotes are overreads -- some even extreme.

But that's ultimately a diversion. Rhetorically, being caught in an overreach undermines your case. But it doesn't actually mean that your basic claims are wrong. His videos often come off like hit jobs on egalitarian scholars.

2. So, we need to start with the big picture before we get to the obscure verses. What were elders and deacons in the early church? When I come to Colossians 4 and hear that Nympha had a church in her house, I think, "I bet she was one of the elders." The same thing for Lydia in Acts 16: "I bet she was an elder in the church that met in her house." Is it a certainty? No. But given my sense of the church from the New Testament as a whole, it seems probable to me.

(At some point, we'll have to reckon with how unique 1 Timothy is in the Pauline corpus. It often reads like an end of ministry systematization rather than Pauline rules that were in place from Day 1. Indeed, the teaching with regard to widows in 1 Timothy 5 is significantly different from his teaching in 1 Corinthians 7, reflecting less a sense of Christ's immanent return.

(These differences have led most non-evangelical scholars to think it dates to decades after Paul had passed. But even from an evangelical perspective, we should probably see it as Paul looking to the time after his passing more than as a snapshot of how things were always done during his ministry.)

3. What were elders (presbyteroi)? I suspect they were built off the synagogue model. Large enough assemblies had a council of elders to help guide the church, like a board of elders today. Think Sanhedrin. In some cases, a whole city may have had a council of elders.

Given this model, you can see that Winger and I are bringing a different set of lenses to this question. I'm pretty sure that he sees an elder as something like a lead pastor. I can see where that would make the assumption that Nympha or Lydia was the overseer of the church in their house seem like more of a stretch. By the way, I agree with him that elder (presbyteros) and overseer (episkopos) both referred to the same role in the earliest church. 

I also disagree with him that the primary function of an elder was teaching. He gets that from one line in the description of an overseer in 1 Timothy 3. But just because an overseer should have the ability to communicate the truth doesn't mean they were something like a teaching pastor. Talk about overreads. He systematizes a bunch of stuff here that the biblical texts don't.

That's another thing I find problematic about his treatments. He doesn't take seriously enough the fact that these books were not written to us -- which is what they say. He seems to have a sense that what the text leaves out is a message for us. But the things the text leaves out are often things that everyone knew at the time of writing. If I write a letter to my mom, I don't have to tell her I'm her son. 

In the same way, the things left out of the biblical texts are some of the most commonly held assumptions -- not the things we can ignore or assume aren't true. Were women commonly elders? The text doesn't say because it was common knowledge one way or another.

So, if there were likely multiple elders in a house church, then it makes perfect sense that the one Paul or Acts associates with the church -- Chloe, Nympha, Priscilla and Aquila, Lydia -- would be on the "elder board." I find Winger's arguments very strained in this regard. Are we absolutely sure? No. Is it likely? Yes. His stuff about Paul or Peter visiting a house and not being an elder in it was really strained. They're just passing through, after all. And who knows how long it was before the church in Lydia's house had official elders?

By the way, Paul references a church in the house of Priscilla and Aquila twice. In Romans 16, he mentions her first. In 1 Corinthians 16, he mentions him first. Winger makes some snide remark about Aquila being mentioned first. I don't know that it would be helpful for me to mock him in my video, but he seems to enjoy portraying egalitarians as stupid a little too much sometimes. It's very tempting to mock him back. But probably not helpful.

4. What were deacons? First, I reject that Acts 6 is about deacons. We don't see Stephen or Philip waiting tables. We see them preaching and evangelizing. Peter got caught with his pants down and God filled in the ministry gap. The word deacon is not used in this chapter. It's a Baptist fallacy. And "I can't help you; I've got to pray" sounds like a flimsy excuse for messing up, A-A-Ron.

If elders were the stationaries, deacons were the moving parts of the earliest churches. They were the ones that served the church. Think Epaphroditus. Think Epaphras. Think Timothy. I can't prove it, but Euodia and Syntyche fit this bill well. Phoebe is explicitly called a deacon. In short, I have a hunch that these deacons fulfilled one set of responsibilities undertaken by the modern pastor. (Another set corresponds to New Testament prophets. Yes, and teachers too.)

Buried in all his blah blah blah is his correct recognition that Phoebe was a deacon of the church of Cenchrea. He rightly notices that she is connected to a specific church, which is the distinguishing context between whether the word is "deacon" or "servant." Yes, prostatis probably has more of a sense of patron here (although BAGD is not infallible either -- a lot of early twentieth century German scholarship was deeply flawed, antisemitic, and perhaps even sexist). 

Did Phoebe read and interpret the letter of Romans to the churches at Rome. I don't think so because I think Romans 16 was a letter to Ephesus. But Winger made a comment that makes me think he doesn't know that these letters were read aloud to churches since most people were illiterate. I find nothing implausible about the suggestion that someone delivering a letter might read it for the church the first time (Sosthenes in 1 Corinthians 1:1?). I can't prove it.

Which is something else annoying about Winger's style. Showing that something isn't proven isn't the same as disproving it. I can't prove that Nympha was an elder in the church in her house. But Winger certainly didn't disprove it either. The man doth protest too much methinks.

5. Priscilla and Aquila. It's nice that he recognizes that she teaches Apollos. But he makes a big deal out of the fact that this is in private and that her husband is with her. The text makes no such big deal. They are not in their home turf when they hear him -- it's a synagogue context -- so it makes perfect sense that they would not confront him publically in the synagogue itself. The text doesn't make any point at all from the fact that they both taught him. Why wouldn't they? I certainly have never thought that Aquila wasn't a strong or knowledgable believer. She just seems to have been even more stand out.

Now we get to filling in the blanks. Did Priscilla teach other men? Nothing in the text says she didn't just as Winger points out it doesn't say she did. I have every reason to believe that, in their house church, she fully participated in the discipleship of the gatherings -- even when Paul was present. Just like the women fully participate in the small group I'm a part of. 

So where do all these boundaries come from? Not from these texts. They come from the imposition of controls from the interpretation of other verses. If we go by what these specific passages have to say, there are no boundaries on who Priscilla can teach or whether she can be an elder in her own house church.

6. I should close with brief mention of 1 Timothy 3. Yes, it assumes that most overseers and deacons will be men. No doubt they were. But it doesn't say, "And women can't be overseers or deacons." In fact, we know Phoebe was a deacon. 

This is a logical fallacy. It extends the situation the text does address and applies it to a situation the text does not address.

Think of when Paul tells the Thessalonians to abstain from sexual immorality. He addresses the "brothers." Does that leave the sisters off the hook? No. "Brothers" just addresses the primary audience he has in mind.

Bottom line: 1 Timothy 3 doesn't say "and women can't be overseers or deacons." It simply addresses the majority case, as you might expect in a patriarchal culture.

I have never taken the "wives" in 3:11 as deaconesses. I take it to refer to the wives of overseers and deacons. By extension, it would apply to the husbands of a female overseer or deacon.

Winger Video 3 -- Women in the OT

I've blogged and done videos on Winger's first two videos on women in ministry and the home. Here is the paper trail:

1. His introductory video: my blog post.and video response
2.1 His material on Genesis 1: my blog post and video response
2.2 His material on Genesis 2-3: my blog post on Gen 2 and video response to both Genesis 2-3 

I see I didn't blog post on Genesis 3 but it is covered in the video.

And now, his third (almost two hour) video on women in the Old Testament. I think I'm somewhere over 4 hours in. 8+ hours to go.
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1. I was a little disappointed with this video. On Genesis 1 and 3, I thought he was mostly right. On Genesis 2, I thought he had things out of focus, although his exegesis wasn't bad. But in this video, I think his biases did a lot of the steering of the ship.

We get a little of his personal journey in the video. He says in effect that he wanted to be an egalitarian but the exegesis (primarily of the female scholars) he investigated was so bad that it turned him off. He seems especially to have it in for Aimee Byrd. 

Miriam
2. When I think of Miriam, I think #3 leader in Israel at the least, maybe even co-#2 with Aaron. Clearly Moses is number 1. We might call Aaron #2 because he plays the role of priest (he is never called high priest in the Old Testament). But Miriam is clearly a leader of Israel too. It seems a natural reading of the text to see her as a higher authority than any other male in Israel except for these two.

Winger spends a little time in Micah 6:4. He spends most of his time targeting egalitarian overreach. It's just a distraction. She is a leader of all the other men in Israel. Full stop.

"I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam." There you have it. Miriam was a leader of Israel as part of God's plan. She's at least #3, out "before" Israel. She is thus a leader of Israel. God puts her in a higher place of authority than all the other men of Israel.

Margaret Mowczko rightly points out that in Exodus 15:21, Miriam sings to "them" -- masculine plural. That is, she is singing to all of Israel, including the men. The previous verse calls her a prophetess. That is, she is prophecying to all of Israel in this song. God is thus speaking Scripture into existence through her. God is using her to breathe Exodus 15. None of this seems particularly controversial to me. 

3. Again, Winger spends a lot of time making fun of interpreters (Aimee Byrd again) saying that Israel waited on Miriam after her rebellion in Numbers 12. He rightly points out that it was God who decided when Israel moved forward in the wilderness. He is arguing against interpreters who say that Israel didn't wait on Miriam during her uncleanness because they saw her as their leader. 

While I was listening to all this, I was thinking to myself. So... you're saying that God did not want Israel to move forward until Miriam could rejoin them? How does that make her less significant than if it was merely Israel waiting on her. 

I chuckled to myself like he chuckles at Aimee Byrd. So it was God that wanted Miriam back in place before they proceeded. OK. :-)

Huldah
3. With Huldah, he chuckles at Aimee Byrd again. You know, when I go read the passages he mentions in her book, she doesn't sound nearly as laughable as he treats her repeatedly. I have to wonder if something is going on with him here. Maybe he needs a little therapy.

For example, she writes, "Here we have a prophetess who is described as 'arguably the first person to grant authoritative status to the Torah scroll deposited in the temple treasury.'" Byrd is actually quoting someone else, but he laughs at her. It's not even an outrageous statement. Let's dig in.

They are refurbishing the temple. The high priest "finds" the Book of the Law. Most scholars think it was some form of Deuteronomy. Winger and Byrd both think it's the whole Pentateuch. 

But let the situation sink in. The high priest hasn't apparently known where the Law was. From Josiah's reaction upon hearing it, he has never heard it before. Josiah instructs the high priest to inquire of Yahweh.

Again, let that sink in. Judah has not been using the Law apparently for a long time. In fact, think of the prophets Elijah and Elisha. Deuteronomy says they should not be offering sacrifices in the north (Deut. 12:14-15). They're only supposed to sacrifice in Jerusalem. Think of Samuel who offered sacrifices all over the place and not just in the tabernacle. It's like none of these prophets have read Deuteronomy. 

According to 2 Chronicles 34, the Passover that followed this event surpassed all the Passovers since Samuel. That fact lends some support to the idea that the Book of the Law largely had not been accessed since then. I'm sure there were traditions in Deuteronomy that they kept, but it was largely lost, it seems.

4. So, Josiah instructs Hilkiah the high priest to go and inquire of Yahweh in relation to the book. Many do in fact believe that Josiah is looking for verification that the book is legit. He thinks it is, but he wants to be sure. And he wants to know what the LORD's instructions are given how long Judah has been oblivious to the book.

Here is where I question both Winger and Byrd. The text does not say that Josiah sent the high priest specifically to Huldah. Josiah simply tells the high priest to inquire of the LORD. It is the high priest that seeks out Huldah.

Apparently, the high priest does not have a close enough connection with the LORD to seek him himself -- even though he presumably enters the Most Holy Place once a year. The high priest seeks out a higher spiritual authority than him. Huldah.

By the way, she's married. Having a husband presents no problem whatsoever for her to prophecy to the king and the high priest. She is clearly a higher spiritual authority than the king or the high priest. And being married makes no difference to her exercise of spiritual authority.

Does she verify that the Book of the Law is legit? I have always seen it that way. I say that she recognized its authoritative status rather than "granted" it. At the very least, she instructs the king and high priest what to do with it. And that is pretty significant.

Why did the high priest not go to Jeremiah or Zephaniah instead? They are around at the time. We don't know. Winger says she was in town and her husband worked in the palace. OK. It doesn't diminish the fact that the high priest and king submitted to her words, spoken from the LORD through her.

See more on priests below. Huldah is the highest spiritual authority in Israel in this moment.

Deborah
5. Deborah is the highest political leader within Israel in Judges 4. She is judging Israel (4:4). She is actually the only judge in Israel who does what the judges of Exodus 18:21-22 and 25-26 do. All the rest of them are merely military leaders that God raises up to fight back Israel's conquerers. She actually makes judge type decisions for the people. She is also the only judge about whom nothing negative is said. All the others in Judges are at least partial failures while she is a model judge.

Winger does a little flatlanding in this section. That is to say, he assumes that the ideal structure of Deuteronomy is in place with high priests doing what they're supposed to do and so forth.

However, Judges is the wild wild west. It has a much rawer, early feel than say Joshua. Joshua reads like a tidy position paper. If we read Judges inductively, it doesn't look like the ideal of Joshua is in place at all. This is why many scholars would argue that Joshua dates to a later time than the traditions of Judges. Joshua is telling us how it should have been. Judges is telling us how it really was.

So when Winger tries to say that she's a judge but not a teacher of Israel because that's what the priests and Levites do, he's imposing Deuteronomy on Judges. The Levite in Judges is no moral example or instructor in the Law (Judges 19). In fact, we get the impression from Judges that priests at this time are pretty much around to make sacrifices to deities, not because there is any true spiritual depth or understanding. 

Judges 17-18 give us a good glimpse of the wild west dimension of Israel at this time. You've got a guy named Micah in Ephraim. Decides he wants to make a shrine. Melts some gold, makes an idol. 

Now he needs a priest, a "Levite." He finds a man "from the family of Judah" who is a Levite (Judg. 17:7). It's as if they don't know that Levites are descendants of Levi. Micah hires the guy to be priest in his shrine. 

Meanwhile, despite the fact that Joshua tells us the tribe of Dan already has its allotment of land, the Danites of Judges 18:1 are still looking. They hire this Levite to come be their priest in the north. His descendants are priests in Dan until the time of the Assyrians, maybe even the Babylonians -- that is, through the whole period of the kings.

This entire story is crazy in the light of the Pentateuch as we have it. My point is that Winger is flatlanding it when he assumes that the priests are teaching the people the Law so that couldn't have been a function Deborah did. The priests seem to know almost nothing of the Law as we know it.

So let me state what has always seemed obvious to me. Deborah is not only the highest political authority in the land at this time -- the judge of Israel for forty years (Judg. 5:31). She is a prophetess and, as far as we can tell, the key spokesman for Yahweh in Israel as well. And she is married. Barak is the fighter, but he implores her to go along with him too so that they will win (4:8), and she give instructions to him from Yahweh (4:6).

Miriam, Huldah, and Deborah were exceptional for Old Testament times, but they show that women in leadership and ministry was possible even under the old covenant. There was no prohibition against it. And if there was no absolute prohibition on it, then how much more in the age of the Spirit should we expect women in ministry and leadership to be perfectly normal.

Priests
6. Let me get to the punchline first. There are no men or women today who are correlates to the Old Testament priests. Jesus is the only high priest. Hebrews is clear. None of the Old Testament sacrifices could actually take away sins (Heb. 10:4). Only the sacrifice of Christ did (10:14). Only Jesus is this type of effectual priest (7:23-25).

In a sense, there is a priesthood of all believers, which includes women (1 Pet. 2:9). We all have access to God through Christ, and the temple veil is torn in two (Mark 15:38). And there is Christ, the only high priest in the true, heavenly tabernacle (Heb. 8:1-2). 

Bottom line. The fact that the priests of the old covenant were all male has nothing to do with whether women can be ministers today. We can ask why they were only men in the old covenant. The Bible gives us no answer. It certainly fit the culture of the day.

Why did Jesus come as a man? I can find no theological reason why he couldn't have come as a woman. But he had to pick one, and in the world to which he came, being a man was most beneficial.

7. Let me make a bold observation. The priests of the Old Testament are not known for their godliness. They are not known for their spiritual insight. Yes, in Deuteronomy they are supposed to teach the Law (Deut. 33:10). But we almost never hear of them actually doing it (cf. 2 Chron. 15:3). Deuteronomy is a kind of position paper that apparently was rarely carried out. Malachi, at the end of the Old Testament, is still indicting priests for failing in this regard (Mal. 2:7).

We can look from the Levite who becomes the priest of Dan in Judges 18 to Eli and his sons in 1 Samuel to the fact that Hilkaiah himself can't say what to do with the Law. To all the prophetic words against all the vain sacrifices that Israel offers (Isa. 1:11; Mic. 6:6-7). To the words that Jeremiah speaks to those who put their faith in the temple (Jer. 7:4). He mentions that God allowed Shiloh to be destroyed in the north (7:12).

Bottom line: The priests in the Old Testament by and large are not in any way models of godliness or true spiritual insight. The prophets are those who are models of godliness in the Old Testment. They are the closest correlates to ministers today, and women are obviously among them. The priests of the old covenant offer sacrifices, and that's about it.

Kings
Women were not kings in Old Testament times. That's just the way it was. Winger is correct that the two examples of royal women are ungodly, but all the kings of the north were ungodly and the vast majority of kings in the south were too. I find no data here of relevance to the contemporary debate.

Mike Winger Video 2.2 (Genesis 2)

1. My walk through Mike Winger's videos on women in ministry and leadership continues. He spends over an hour in his second video on Genesis 2. He goes through a lot of small arguments that various people make here and there. He seems especially to engage two resources.

First, I am glad that he has continued his dialog with Philip Payne. It seems to me he argues with him over small points. I went to those points in Payne's book and didn't get the same feel as you get from his video. I didn't disagree with Winger on most of his points in relation to these small points. There are so many arguments that have been made by so many people on both sides -- some are stronger than others.

The other source he engages significantly in this video is Two Views on Women in Ministry in the Zondervan Counterpoints series. It features Tom Schreiner and Craig Blomberg on the complementarian side and Linda Bellvue and Craig Keener (Asbury professor) on the egalitarian side.

You may be surprised to know that I agree with a great deal of what Winger says about the details of Genesis 2. In fact, he reminded me of some of the same reactions I had to various ideas in seminary. At Asbury, Don Joy was particularly fond of the suggestion that the initial 'adam of Genesis 2 might have been androgynous -- both male and female. I thought this was funny then. Joy had asked the Bible faculty at Asbury about the concept before he published his book Bonding. They told him they didn't see it, but he published it anyway.

I would say, though, that I don't think it's as outrageous as it might seem. I just don't think it's the right interpretation.

2. I do want to get to some key points of disagreement, though, before getting into minutia. Fairly early on in the video, he says that both complementarians and egalitarians both agree on the centrality of Genesis 2 for the debate. Let me say as an odd duck that I have never really felt this way. In my booklet, Why Wesleyans Favor Women in Ministry (2004), I didn't mention Genesis at all. I do mention it in my more recent, A Biblical Argument for Women in Ministry and Leadership because it is part of the debate, but it has never been the central part of the debate for me.

Why? Two reasons.

The first is something that I discussed in one of two posts I made in preparation for this one. We are in a phase of biblical studies and biblical theology that is characterized by what I have called "flatness." For most, it is a "pre-modern" or "pre-reflective" perspective. That is to say, it is based on a deficient understanding of how to read the books of the Bible in context.

I may actually be more annoyed at the prevalence of these "narrative" readings among post-liberals for whom it is a postmodern reading. These narrative readers deliberately minimize contextual readings in favor of reading the Bible as a single story. I am perfectly fine with this as long as you acknowledge that you are reading the Bible out of context to do so. 

The pre-modern reads the Bible as one book from God to us without awareness of context. But the post-liberal to a large extent ignores historical difference. For some, it's a matter of principle even. In my Who Decides What the Bible Means? I set out as legitimate 1) original meaning interpretations, 2) orthodox-consensus readings of Scripture, 3) church-community readings of Scripture, and 4) individual spiritual readings of Scripture -- the key being that the Holy Spirit is directing these readings.

3. But if we construct a biblical theology, it is clear that a Christian reading of Scripture must privilege New Testament conclusions on Old Testament issues over the original meaning of the Old Testament. [At this point, a number of evangelical Old Testament scholars break out in hives.]

For example, there is nothing in Leviticus to suggest that animal sacrifices (or the temple) will ever stop being offered. In this regard, Hebrews provides the authoritative perspective on those sacrifices. They were illustrations of the one effective sacrifice of Christ. Similarly, circumcision is the assumption of the Old Testament. But Paul tells the Galatians they will have fallen from grace if they get circumcised.

Finally, as I show in the previous post I mentioned, the New Testament has distinct interpretations of Old Testament passages that go well beyond what those passages meant originally. For example, we would not get the impression that Lot was greatly distressed about the sins of Sodom from Genesis, but 2 Peter 2:7-8 portray him as a righteous man vexed by the sins of the city. We can take 2 Peter to be making an inspired point through Lot without thereby changing our inductive interpretation of Genesis 19.

What are you getting at Ken? What I am getting at is that I am most concerned with what the New Testament has to say about men and women more than with what Genesis 2 by itself says. This is not because Genesis 2 isn't significant. It is because Christian theology prioritizes New Testament revelation as more complete and more precise. 

(Mind you -- I know I am creating challenges for myself hereby. Winger already mentions in this video that 1 Timothy 2:13 uses the order of Adam and Eve's creation to support 2:12. I will defer that discussion for later.) 

Let me illustrate this principle of NT privilege. Colossians 2:16 tells the Gentile Colossians to stand their ground about anyone who condemns them because they do not keep the Jewish Sabbath. Romans 14:5 similarly tells the Romans to decide as a matter of their own conscience whether they will consider one day above another -- a clear allusion to the Jewish Sabbath. In short, Paul did not consider the Jewish Sabbath to be binding on Gentile believers. For him, it was a matter of personal conviction for them.

Now this is a straightforward observation, in my opinion. But it causes all matter of hives for the Flatlanders. "But, but, but." One person said to me once, "But the Sabbath goes back to creation!" (Gen. 2:3). "I know," I responded. "Isn't it crazy? Paul doesn't care."

4. So what does Genesis 2 say? Here let me invoke two posts I did recently in my Science and Scripture series, one of which mentioned different approaches to Genesis 2-3 in that regard and the second of which did some preparatory work on questions of genre. I'll leave the New Testament use of Genesis 2-3 for later in Winger's series.

First, Genesis 2-3 in context was an expression of the messed up state of the world. That is its point. I argued in the second post just mentioned that a comparison of Genesis 1-2 suggests that these are not to be taken as rigid history but as more "archetypal" -- expressing fundamental things. The reason is because Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 present a different order of creation. This doesn't mean one is wrong. It means that we are wrong to expect them to be literal presentations. They are doing something more profound. They aren't exactly poetry, but what they are doing is as "poetic" as it is literal, in my opinion.

The later of the two creation presentations, Genesis 1, puts male and female together as co-regents of the earth with no fall mentioned.

The second presentation in Genesis 2-3 culminates in three expressions of the state of the world. Men work hard to get the soil to yield its fruit. Both men and women will die even though God had intended for them to eat from the Tree of Life and live forever. Women will have painful childbearing and they will find themselves dominated by their husbands. And of course there are consequences for snakes too.

This is the point of Genesis 2-3. These chapters express the fallen situation of humanity. They are "etiological." They answer the questions, "Why do men have to work so hard on the land?" "Why do people die?" "Why do women have such painful childbirth?" "Why are women dominated by men?" (And why don't people and snakes get along?) [1]

In the process, the point of Genesis 2 is to picture the world before it was this way. As I have argued, it is probably not a video tape. If it were meant as a videotape, it would contradict the order of Genesis 1. Rather, it expresses that 1) men did not have to work hard before the Fall, 2) women did not have a painful life before the Fall, with their husbands dominating them and, of much less importance, 3) snakes and humans weren't on such bad terms before the Fall. 

For this reason, if there is hierarchy in Genesis 2, it is not the point. Indeed, the point is the harmony of Adam and Eve before the Fall, their peaceful cooperation. Their co-regency. The point of the way it is presented is the oneness and unity of Adam and Eve before the Fall -- the one fleshness of them and the distinction of them from the animals -- not Adam's authority over Eve. That almost goes against the point.

Shocker -- I am willing to say that there could be a light assumption of Adam's primacy in the way Creation 2 is presented. What I am saying is that, not only is that not the point. I am saying that to emphasize it is to miss the point of the story, which is the harmony of the two prior to their act of disobedience. 

In such a thoroughly patriarchal world, how might you present a pre-Fall situation that did not have man and woman at each other's throats? That is what Genesis 2 is about. It is the structure of the ancient world without the conflict, struggle, and bitterness. It is God meeting them in their assumptions and moving them from there. It gave an idyllic picture that was the opposite of dominance.

But God wants to do more!

5. So the street warfare that Winger engages in is all fine and good. I agree with him on almost every minute point of interpretation. But, at the risk of playing into his hands, I believe that this is a spiritual struggle. There are women who know they are called. There are men who know women are called. Some of the interpretations of some can be a little "creative," shall we say. (And Winger fully acknowledges that there are some crazy complementarian interpretations out there too.) 

But is because they see the trajectory of Scripture. They see the whole council of God. One of the problems with fundamentalism, in my opinion, is that it can get so involved with the verse-by-verse street warfare that it misses the Spirit of Scripture. It misses the big point because it is arguing about some detail of the letter. This is what the Princeton Calvinists did with slavery in the mid-1800s.

This is not putting experience above the Bible. Interpreting and applying the Bible is a complicated thing -- look at how many thousands of interpretations and applications there are out there. A little guidance from the Holy Spirit seems in order. Indeed, Bible technicians, "letteralists," can be dangerous because they can miss the heart of Scripture while focusing on the details (cf. Matt. 23:23-24).  

[1] I have no problem seeing the snake as Satan, but this was not part of the original meaning of Genesis 3. Not only is Satan not mentioned, but the understanding of Satan does not seem to have come into play until after this time -- later in the post-exilic period. It is not until the first century BC that any surviving Jewish writing equates the snake with Satan.

The Third Dimension of Scripture

I have watched the more than one hour part of Mike Winger's second video on women in ministry that has to do with Genesis 2. I feel like to address it properly, I might need to do some prep work. So this is the first of two posts leading up to my response to his treatment of Genesis 2.

Much of evangelical (and of course fundamentalist) discussion of the Bible takes place in what I might call Flatland. It consists of two-dimensional discussions of the literary dimension of the text. Why? Because historical-cultural discussions are full of landmines. There is barbed wire and electric fences on certain issues. You're allowed to think freely and critically within the fence, but it can be risky to cross it.

Let me mention two flashpoints.

1. I grew up expecting God to speak to me and other Christians directly through the words of the biblical text. For example, you could read a verse that said, "They were all in one accord" and get the impression that God was telling you to buy a Honda Accord. It's not that we thought that was what the text meant to other Christians. It's just that God could speak directly to you through its words in magical ways.

In college and then seminary, I became more aware of what we might call the "original meaning" of biblical texts. I learned something called "inductive Bible study." You read a verse in the light of the verses that came before and after it. And you learned about historical context too -- the background of a biblical text in historical times and places.

I began to notice something. One thing I noticed is that the New Testament authors sometimes read Old Testament texts like I grew up reading them. For example, Hosea 11:1-2 is not a prediction of the future -- "When Israel was a child, I loved him, and I called my son out of Egypt. But the more I called them, the more they went away from me." It's talking about the exodus and the fact that Israel turned away from God.

Then imagine my surprise that Matthew heard in this verse an anticipation of Jesus going down to Egypt as a child and then coming out again. The verse had nothing to do with the Messiah originally. Matthew was reading the text in a way that went well beyond what the text was originally about -- and he does this regularly.

As I worked through the "prophecy-fulfillment" chart in the back of my Thompson Chain Reference King James Bible, I began to discover this dynamic repeatedly. The "fulfillments" of Old Testament words in the New Testament largely weren't from predictions. They were rather the NT authors reading the OT with spiritual eyes.

Now, don't get me wrong. I don't have a problem with this. I've seen a lot of energy spent in evangelical circles trying to figure out ingenious ways to say, "No, no, wait -- they actually were reading the OT in context." What I'm saying is that this is not the Bible's problem. It's a problem with our expectations. If we let the NT authors read the OT like Pentecostals and holiness folk have always read the Bible, there's no problem at all.

2. Let me give another example, Luke hears in Psalm 16:10 a prediction of Jesus' resurrection. "You will not abandon my life to Sheol; you will not give your faithful one to see the Pit." In context, the meaning of the psalm seems pretty obvious to me -- the psalmist is thanking God for not letting him die.

But Luke's Peter hears resurrection. David died. If the passage was about David, Peter argues, then it couldn't be true. Rather, David is anticipating Jesus' resurrection.

This really bothered me in seminary. The meaning of the psalmist seemed so obvious. He's not talking about final death. He's talking about not dying at that point of his life. I might easily pray such a prayer tonight. I know I'll die eventually. I'm asking God not to let me die tonight or next week... now, in other words.

This doesn't bother me anymore. What is inspired is the point a biblical author is making. The path to such points may involve cultural assumptions. I often use Paul's comment about being taken to the third heaven in 2 Corinthians 12:2. His point isn't that there are three layers of heaven with God in the highest sky of the layer salad. That's just a cultural assumption. His point is that he was taken into the very presence of God.

3. What this means is that there may not be just one meaning to Genesis 1-3 in the Bible. There may be the original meaning of Genesis 1 and the original meaning of Genesis 2-3 and there may be the way Paul interprets Genesis 2 in 1 Corinthians and the way Paul interprets Genesis 2-3 in 1 Timothy. And all these meanings may not be the same, and yet they can all be inspired.

Texts are "polyvalent" -- susceptible to multiple potential meanings. Paul interprets Genesis 22:18 in both Galatians 3:16 and Romans 4:13, but he interprets it a little differently in each place. Daniel 11:31 interprets an abomination in relation to an event in 167BC, but Mark 13:14 take that same verse in relation to an event in AD70.

In short, the same words in Scripture can mean more than one inspired thing, and that's ok.

Therefore, in preparation for Winger's discussion of Genesis 2, 1 Timothy 2 can use Genesis 2-3 in an inspired way that, at the same time, is not what Genesis 2-3 originally meant. Or it can change the emphasis. And that's ok. The way a NT text uses an OT text only tells you for sure something about the NT text. It doesn't necessarily tell you as much about the OT text.

4. Here's the second flashpoint. As I went through seminary, I began to understand the reasoning behind some unpopular theories that went against tradition. For example, it is tradition that Moses wrote Genesis. 

But it's pretty hard to find a clear statement in the NT that Moses wrote Genesis. It's much easier to find connections between Moses and the rest of the Pentateuch but even here, it is often something Moses is saying in the Pentateuch that is referenced. I actually do think that the NT authors likely assumed Mosaic authorship. In my mind, this falls under the heading of cultural "assumptions that aren't the point."

Having learned inductive Bible study in seminary, it became clear 1) that Moses is never mentioned in Genesis and thus he is never said to be its author (it's anonymous) and 2) Moses is always referenced in the third person in the rest of the Pentateuch (Moses did this. Moses did that. Moses went up on a mountain and died.). From an inductive standpoint, we simply will not conclude that Moses wrote the Pentateuch.

5. Second, I used to laugh at the late 1800s source hypothesis JEDP. (And, by the way, it has been significantly critiqued and revised over the years.) But when I began to look at some of the reasons behind these sorts of source theories, many of them actually make some sense.

For example, there are several instances of a very similar story in the Pentateuch taking place, one of which uses Yahweh as the name of God and the other of which uses Elohim as his name. At one point, I made a chart of the Flood story. I put in one column verses with Yahweh and in another column verses with Elohim. You pretty much end up with two versions of the Flood story one of which has 7 of every clean animal and the other of which has 2 of every animal.

I don't know how it all worked. I don't have a good answer to all the whys. But it makes a lot of sense to me that Genesis 2-3 was part of an epic of Israel's story that is older than Genesis 1, which was perhaps an introduction added when the whole Pentateuch was finally collected as a whole.

Such theories bother a lot of people. For one thing, they can involve some speculation. It's educated speculation but still, scholars can get out of hand. 

The fact is, we just don't know a lot of things. Our lack of knowledge doesn't disprove that such things happened. The proper conclusion isn't, "Well then let's just say Moses wrote it." The proper conclusion is, "We don't know a lot of things for sure about how the biblical text came together."

6. The third dimension of Scripture, as I'm talking about it, is this highly complicated background of the text that is crucial in interpreting it for what it originally meant -- and that we often lack sufficient information about to know. 

God does just fine, and we do too. God makes the text come alive and speaks directly to us anyway. And of course, there is the church of the ages. God has arguably spoken to it as well and solidified some meanings.

This is quite involved. It is relevant to my engagement with Winger's discussion of Genesis 2 because I would say he reads the text in Flatland, and our discussions of the text often take place in Flatland. His arguments are often very grammatical and intratextual. But that's only part of the puzzle.

The discussion continues...

Mike Winger Video 2.1: Genesis 1:26-27 and Co-Dominion

Recently, I started wading through Mike Winger's 13 hour series on women in ministry and complementarianism. In this post, I start with the first 20 minutes of his second video. His second video is over 2 hours long and discusses Genesis 1-3. I'll start with what he says about Genesis 1.
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1. Winger's analysis of Genesis 1:26-27 is correct. The Hebrew אָדָם ('adam) in these verses is generic and refers to humankind in general -- not to males in particular (a mistake Mark Driscoll once made). God creates humanity in his image, in his likeness. Male and female he creates them. He gives male and female dominion over the earth.

Winger seems quite keen to make sure his friends know that, even though he sounds egalitarian, he's not done yet. But he is emphatic that both men and women are equal in value and dignity. This is key to his presentation of complementarianism -- the roles may be different but the value is the same. 

I commend him on considering men and women of equal value. As Peter told the Gentiles, "God does not show favoritism" (Acts 10:34). The Holy Spirit fell equally on men and women on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2:17). God doesn't love men more than women. Whatever Galatians 3:28 means, surely it at least implies that.

2. Winger wants to sharply distinguish complementarians from earlier "patriarchalism," where the man was considered superior in value to the woman. In straight patriarchalism, the woman is effectively inferior to the man in value. Complementarianism considers women "equal but different." Again, I want to commend the way complementarianism wants to consider men and women equal in value. 

From a sociological perspective, complementarianism is a fairly recent development -- younger than egalitarianism in fact. The idea of complementarianism in this form arose in the late 70s and 80s by individuals like Wayne Grudem and John Piper. I commend those with this view for recognizing that valuing men over women violates Scripture in places like Genesis 1.

I also agree with those who see it as a fall back position -- it conceeds as much as it must while preserving as much of the human status quo as it can. You might argue that it is simply a passible version of the earlier patriarchy. We know we can't love our wives and treat them as beneath us. So we say we love them just as much as we love men but insist that it's just the rules that keep them in a box.

In his first video, Winger implies that it is a slippery slope fallacy to assume complementarianism always devolves into abuse. I agree logically. However, this doesn't mean that complementarianism does not have a structure that practically is more conducive to abuse than egalitarianism. It raises the stakes on getting this question right.

3. Before we get to Genesis 2, I want to talk a little hermeneutics groundwork myself. In the circles where we debate these things, the Bible is usually interpreted in a very "flat" way. That is to say, the discussion is two dimensional -- it takes place in the "world within the text," within the literary context. Similarly, the whole Bible is treated more or less as a single text, not dozens of texts written over a 1000 year period. In other places, I call this an unreflective reading of the Bible. 

The third dimension of Scripture is the "world behind the text." This is not simply historical references -- most still think of those from inside the text. Reading the Bible in full context sees the books of the Bible themselves in history on a deep level. We can see Scripture as the story of God revealing himself to many different people in different places in different times, situations, and different cultures -- and thus in different ways.

Here's what I think. I'll leave out the 35 years of development for me to get here. Genesis 1 is an introduction to the Pentateuch. It is later than Genesis 2-3 by several hundred years. It is really even different in genre from Genesis 2-3. It's doing something different from Genesis 2-3.

Genesis 2-3 are part of an epic story of Israel's founding. Genesis 1 grounds that story (and Israel's religious practices) in God's sovereignty over the earth. Given the world of that day, Genesis 1 is quite remarkable. God alone orders the chaos of the world -- there is no conflict between him and other gods. He says it, and it is done.

And men and women are both given dominion over the earth. They are both created in God's image. As Winger says, Genesis 1 does not distinguish their value or dignity. This is quite remarkable, and it grounds the entire Pentateuch, including Genesis 2-3.

We will return to this deeper hermeneutical discussion as we move into Genesis 2-3.

4. I am pleased that Winger at least sees Genesis 1 as giving women dominion over everything except men. This is his complementarianism. For him, there is an order of authority in the home but it does not limit women in any way in relation to anything else. Women have dominion over trees like men. Women have authority over fish. Women have dominion over animals like men. They can cook beef and pig. Whew. This is the level of discussion we are at in American Christianity. Let that sink in.

He does address Titus 2:5, which says that wives should be "working at home" and "submissive to their own husbands" in the ESV. I ironically heard a very conservative woman preacher once point out the word "at" here from the pulpit, arguing that God's ideal was for a woman to stay at home. This was a quite remarkable moment of inner conflict for her no doubt.

I knew enough Greek at the time to see that the word at is not actually in the Greek. "working at home" is a single word in Greek (oikourgos). Her whole point was a coincidence of English translation. I suppose there's one small argument for knowing how to access the original languages.

We will get to Titus and the household codes in Colossians/Ephesians/1 Peter soon enough. Suffice it to say, their basic structure is completely in line with the culture of Paul's day. Their structure aligns completely with Aristotle in his Politics. In short, there is nothing distinctively Christian about them in their form. It was when early Christianity pushed against the culture of its day that it was revealing core Christian principles and values.

Titus 2:5 was thus depicting what an honorable woman looked like in that day. It is not transforming culture. It is not moving culture toward heaven or the kingdom of God. It was saying, "What does a virtuous woman look like in the late first century?" It was accommodating culture. 

How deeply ironic is that! Applying the household codes literally tries to make a secular culture today -- which has been shaped by Judeo-Christian values -- to conform to the secular Greco-Roman culture of 2000 years ago.

Winger's interpretation of this verse in Titus is that it is about fulfilling the responsibilities of the home rather than staying at home. He shows that in Luke 8:2-3, women supported Jesus' traveling ministry -- which means they weren't staying at home. That's a good point on his part.

I hate that we're even having questions like these. How much time can a woman spend outside the house? This sort of crap sure helps our witness. Not. I get why some women are sick of the church. Some of us can't even recognize the Christian influence on our own culture and want to return to the weak and beggardly elements of fallen human culture.

Mike Winger video 1: Listen to the Bible with an Open Mind

I've had Mike Winger's name mentioned to me often enough as a kind of trump card that I've decided to submit myself to his 13 hour extraganza on the topic of women in ministry. 

These are my notes. In more than one place I have heard, "Say what you want, but Mike Winger." 

So bring it.

I listened to Hour #1, the Prologue. He has 7 pre-points and 3 more pre-points. Here's what I heard:

1. Don't make your decision on the basis of experience, make it on the Bible.

2. No, not everyone who is in favor of women in ministry has been duped by feminism.

3. We good complementarians aren't arguing for the bad old patriarchy either.

4. Equal valuing of women doesn't rule out God-designed role differences.

5. Complementarianism doesn't necessarily lead to women abuse (even if some complementarians are abusers). 

6. A person's individual story doesn't trump the Bible.

7. Don't just use one verse to trump the rest of the Bible.

Then three things he says he won't do in the videos:

1. He will not submit the Bible to cultural pressures.

2. He won't play games with "polemics" or moral pressure.

3. He doesn't need to defend God or be his PR agent.

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OK. Bring on the Bible. Let's go. 

Here are some thoughts on the subtext of video #1 -- what's going on below the surface. 

1. He seems sincere. He says he really wanted to switch to being an egalitarian, but the Bible just didn't turn out that way. He says he's done lots of research. He doesn't yell at his wife even though he's a complementarian. Great. 

He portrays himself as a truth-seeker. Just the facts of the Bible, ma'am. You can see where the style would be very appealing to the Jordan Peterson type. This is the "T" personality that thinks it's logical while everyone else lets their feelings get in the way. None of this emotional crap. I'm going to tell it like it is. Nothing but the real Bible here. 

Before we've really heard a word of the Bible, he's beaming out, "You wouldn't need to watch any more videos to know that complementarianism is right. I've done the homework. You're good to go on being the head of your home, guys. Just reference the 13 hours. Nobody's going to actually watch all that."

2. But he is giving off a clear vibe -- in fact, it's more than a vibe. His subtext is that egalitarians aren't true to the Bible. He's beaming that egalitarians aren't good thinkers -- women egalitarians especially.

3. He does a hit and run on several books. Some will no doubt think -- I don't have to worry about anything those books have to say. Winger quoted a paragraph from them and, BAM, that means the rest of the book is crap. 

I want to focus on two in particular. One is Philip Payne's 512 page book, Man and Woman in Christ. Winger complains that it's a long book. I sure hope Winger engages this book in the later videos because otherwise he's dismissing this guy's work by quoting less than a paragraph of it. (Payne has a PhD from Cambridge and was a missionary to Japan)

Again, many will subconsciously think, "That whole book is wrong because Winger read a paragraph from it and trashed it."

What I found most objectionable was the way he scoffed at Beth Allison Barr's book, The Making of Biblical Womanhood. I'm sure some men watching enjoyed that. Stupid woman, chuckle, chuckle. Touchy feely. I seriously wonder if he read beyond the first chapter. We'll see. Now I feel like I need to blog through her book to make it clear how smart she is after his, chuckle, chuckle, stupid woman.

His hit job here quotes a passage where a student in one of her classes at Baylor -- yes, she has a PhD in history -- would not shut up and stop being rude to her because she was a woman professor. The student should have been kicked out of her class. 

Here's a logical fallacy. Just because a book has some experiential elements or personal stories doesn't automatically mean that its argument isn't biblically based. Let's see if he engages it again when he gets to the actual Bible because she discusses the Bible throughout the book. Otherwise, he may have revealed his true heart.

For many men, this is pretty much an academic issue. It's not personal, says the hit man about to kill someone. But women who hear God calling them face this stuff all the time. It is personal for them. And it's serious. The issue costs most men nothing. 

But if he's putting a stumblingblock in front of women God has called, that's serious. If he's putting roadblocks in front of the Holy Spirit, that's VERY serious. Why not take a Gamaliel approach -- if they're not called by God, God will stop them?

On to the Bible...