Theology in the Raw - #625 - Sexual Attraction Fixed or Fluid? - Women in Leadership? - Book of Enoch

Episode Date: December 11, 2017

Go to the Bad Christian Conference! It's Januray 27th-28th for $100 in Nashville. Check it out at BadChristianCon.com.  Preston is once again answering your "Patreon Approved" questions. Join the Patreon team at patreon.com/theologyintheraw. If Annihilation is true, than why does Hell exist?  Is sexual attraction fixed or fluid? Is it different for men and women?  Does the Bible trump the creeds?  What is the Book of Enoch? Why isn't in the Canon?  Should women be in church leadership? Does the Bible support the Complementarian or Egalitarian view?  Check out Derek Minor - Walls ft. Urban Rescue Support Preston Support Preston by going to patreon.com Connect with Preston Follow him on Twitter @PrestonSprinkle Check out his website prestonsprinkle.com If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review.

If annihilation is true, then why does hell exist? Is sexual attraction fluid or fixed? And should we follow the early creeds or can scripture trump the early creeds? I'm Preston Sprinkle and this of Theology in the Raw. I have in front of me the questions that you have submitted and voted on. As of the last podcast, I am submitting all your questions to my Patreon supporters. If you're a Patreon supporter at any level, then you get to vote on which questions you want me to address. And so you have voted. The verdict is in and the questions are in front

of me. We are going to talk about annihilation. We're going to talk about sexual attraction. We're going to talk about the early creeds and scripture. We're going to talk about annihilation. We're going to talk about sexual attraction. We're going to talk about the early creeds and scripture. We're going to talk about the book of Enoch, whether that should be in the canon. And I've saved the most controversial for the last, I think probably the most difficult one for the last question that I will address today. And that is, should women serve in leadership at church? I've addressed this question several times in the past, and I definitely want to spend a lot of time there to give you some raw thoughts on where I am at on that issue. So a couple of reminders. I am going to be out of the country. In fact, by the time you're listening to this i will probably be on an airplane from lax to melbourne australia so going to go into australia for a month january sorry december 10th through

january 12th i'm taking my cheaper microphone with me i can't take my whole setup here but i will take my little portable my little little snowball USB microphone and hopefully capture some podcasts while, I don't know, sitting on a warm beach in the middle of December in Australia. How about that? I'm going to be there for a month. I'm actually staying at the house of my buddy, Michael Bird. Some of you may know Michael Byrd. He is a New Testament scholar, and I almost said world-renowned. That might be a little bit bold, but he is very much becoming a world-renowned New Testament scholar. We met each other in Scotland many years ago, about 10 years ago. He was teaching at a seminary out there at a Christian college,

and I was doing my PhD. And we, yeah, we just really hit it off. A lot of similar research interests. And since then, Mike has gone on to write, I mean, gosh, more than a dozen really high quality scholarly books on the New Testament, on the early church. And he is Australian. He lives in Melbourne, teaches at Moore Theological College, a great theological college there in Melbourne, Australia. And he's going to be out of the country for a couple months and said, hey, mate, if you can get over here, you got a free house to stay in and a free car to drive.

So we ended up finding some cheap tickets. Long story short, we decided to go spend the winter, or at least part of the winter in the summertime of Australia. So that's what we're going to be doing. I'm speaking at one church, I believe, Gateway Church on December 14th in Melbourne, Australia. So if you're in, if you are listening from Melbourne or the area, then you might want to check that out. You can go to my website, PrestonSprinkle.com, look at my speaking engagements, and you can get some information there on my speaking event on December 14th. But I think that's the only thing I'm doing down there. I'm going to get together

some people in Sydney and outside Melbourne, but just really kind of enjoy my time out there. But I will bring my microphone. We'll be podcasting, so look forward to that. Also, when I come back in January, again, I will be at the Bad Christian Conference, January 27th to 28th weekend. It's a Saturday, Sunday. Go to badchristiancon.com if you want to attend. But I believe it is sold out. I just listened to their recent podcast,

and they said that they were about to sell out. That was a few days ago when they recorded that. So most likely it's sold out. But if you want to go, put your name on the waiting list because they might try to find a venue that can hold more people. Right now they wanted to cap it at 200 people. But they might expand that. So if you do want to go, definitely go put your name on the waiting list.

Pete Enns will be there. Derek Miner will be there. And other musicians, As Cities Burn, Emery, and Jonathan Merritt will be there. It should be a wonderful time. However, as some of you know, there was kind of a big hubbub that erupted on Twitter a few days ago. Apparently, I didn't see it, but it had to do with, well, it had to do with the fact that I was invited to go to this Bad Christian Conference.

And because I'm a, well, because some people think I'm a Nazi and a bigot and I'm causing harm toward sexual and gender minorities that they were incredibly offended that the bad Christian guys would invite me to their conference, which is now making the conference very unsafe for sexual and gender minorities. At least that's what my friends have told me was the gist of the Twitter thread. I don't, I've, a couple of years ago, I began muting a lot of people on Twitter. And typically they are far right fundamentalists

or far left non-fundamentalists. But the rhetoric is typically the same. Like they dehumanize, they say things about my beliefs that completely misrepresent what I believe. And they accuse me of all kinds of bad stuff that isn't true really. So I began meeting them. So I don't see a lot of stuff that happens on Twitter. You guys see more than I do. I don't really see this because I don't really want to see it. I love dialoguing in embodied relationships and listening to other people. But as far as just Twitter accusations being thrown around, I just got better things to

do with my life than to watch that. But I did hear that it became kind of a big deal. In fact, it was such a big debate and hubbub on Twitter that went all through the night a few days ago that the Bad Christian Podcast devoted a whole episode to talking about it. So if you want to hear the gist of that, well, I don't recommend that you necessarily need to hear the gist of that. But if you are interested in what that was all about, you can go to the Bad Christian Podcast and listen to their latest episode, or at least one of the recent episodes on how the Bad Christian Conference broke Twitter is, I think, the title of their episode. And actually, my friend Matt Carter, who's one of the Bad

Christian guys, and Joey Svensson, I thought they did a wonderful job being fair and yet trying to navigate what happened on Twitter, I think. Again, I wasn't participating in that conversation on Twitter, but I love their thoughts that they had. And they actually had people on their podcast from both sides of the debate. Those who, um, you know, were more accusing me of being a Nazi and other people that, um, said, no, I don't necessarily agree with Preston's conclusions on everything, but he, I, he definitely should be at the conference. Like we, we can hear other ideas that we may or may not disagree with. And that's not causing harm on other people. Anyway, so that's more introduction than you might need to know. But if you want to go to that conference, go check it out. I'm really, well, I'm interested to see how that conference

is going to go now. I didn't think it was going to be such a controversial place, but if you are wanting to go and you're scared that it's going to be an unsafe environment, I promise you, I will, I don't believe in violence, so there will be no threat of physical violence on my part towards anybody, and I will do my best to express my ideas in the utmost humility and listening and humanizing posture. So it shouldn't be an unsafe place for anybody to go in and to listen to certain ideas. Let's jump into the first question here. If annihilation is true, then why does hell exist? The questioner says, my first encounter with your work was reading Erasing Hell. I was going to be a student at EBC in Simi Valley. And when I found out you were teaching Old Testament Survey, I figured I should acquaint myself with your work. I thought you and Francis did an

excellent job of laying out a case for the fact that hell does in fact exist. And it is simply, not simply a scare tactic, a metaphor, a philosophical balance for heaven. Listening to you talk about switching from ECT to annihilation has caused me to question the historical view as well. So let me answer this question, I mean, really quickly. The annihilation view of hell does not deny the existence of hell. Okay, it just argues for a different understanding of the duration of the punishment in hell. Eternal conscious torment, the traditional view, says that the duration of the punishment goes on forever and ever, and the annihilation view says that it doesn't go on forever and ever.

That really is the gist of the difference between annihilation and eternal conscious torment. But both views very much uphold the existence of hell. Even universalism, I just talked to somebody about this yesterday, that universalism does not deny hell. Did you know that? Did you know that Christian universalists do not deny the existence of hell? They simply argue that you can be rescued out of hell after you go there. But it doesn't say that hell doesn't exist. That is one of the biggest misunderstandings in all the hell debates. Some people say some people believe in hell, others don't believe in hell. Hell exists. I mean, if you believe in the Bible, it's just there. The question is, how long is the duration of

the punishment? Or is there a second or third or indefinite number of chances to repent and accept God while being in hell? But no, none of the three views, or at least the more thoughtful people advocating for these three views, ECT, annihilation, and universalism, the more thoughtful, biblically-minded people don't just straight up deny the existence of hell. Also, annihilation does not teach that when you die, you sort of pass out of existence. It says that when Jesus returns and raises the dead, both the good and the wicked, then we will all face judgment and believers, those who embrace God, will enter into a new creation, a new heavens and new earth. And non-believers or those who have rejected God will be cast into hell where they will either suffer forever and ever and ever, which is the ECT view, or they will be punished with death, the cessation of life. I don't like

the term annihilation per se, because it implies some sort of like disintegration of your material being. And that's not really the point. The point is that, as Paul says, the wages of sin is death, not, he doesn't say it's torment forever and ever. So Paul was an annihilationist. Boom. Wow. Okay. It's more difficult than that. But I mean, that's the essential idea is that the annihilationist or conditionalist position is that, does not at all say there's no hell. It just says that when you go to hell, you die. Your life ceases. Next question, is sexual attraction fluid or fixed?

Bit of a background here. Our teenage daughter is heavily involved in theater and has many friends who are LGBTQ. Her best friend just came out and has a boyfriend, but she has also told me that he is actually bisexual. She, I think this is a daughter, spends a lot of time with him and we love him dearly, but we have natural parenting questions and concerns, as we would with any of our friends. Another friend she had was straight and then gay and then straight again. And our daughter gets offended when we say it's just a phase or confused and trying to figure things out. So my question is, says the listener, how fluid is sexual attraction really?

The whole idea that sexual attraction is fluid and not fixed is in some ways scientists have understood that for a while. It really predates the modern period. In fact, if you read ancient accounts of sexuality, they typically speak in terms of bisexuality more often than people being same-sex attracted or opposite-sex attracted exclusively. But more recently in the last few generations, there's been more of an emphasis on sexual orientation being fixed. People are born gay or born straight, and that is an innate, unalterable status of their sexual experience or attraction or orientation.

But in the last 10 years or so, there's been a lot more emphasis and studies done showing that sexuality is indeed more fluid. And one of the main studies in this area has been Dr. Lisa Diamond, Dr. Lisa Diamond, who is a professor down in Salt Lake City. Not a Christian at all, not religious, but she did a massive research study done on a bunch of women, women who were sexual minorities or women who identified as non-straight. And she followed them over a period of 10 years. So it's a longitudinal study.

It's not just like studying people at one point in time and actually followed them over a period of 10 years and found that almost all of them who identified at the beginning as non-straight changed their identities throughout that 10-year period. Some were like, yes, I'm a lesbian. And two years in, they were like, oh, I think I'm bisexual because I met this guy and I'm kind of into him. And then, you know, then all of a sudden they have a horrible relationship with him. And then six years later, they're like, no, I think I'm a lesbian again, but I still kind of have this thing for guys too. So I don't know what I am. Maybe I'm bisexual. And others had different,

you know, of the hundred women that she followed, I mean, almost all, almost all of them had some sort of fluidity in their, both their identity and their experiences in terms of sexual attraction. And in that study, Lisa Diamond kind of said several times that, you know, gosh, wow, it seems like women are much more sexually fluid than men. But we know men are not sexually fluid. So, you know, she didn't really look at men. But then several years later, she presented a paper after doing more study and saying, I was wrong. The title of the paper is I was wrong. Men are pretty darn sexually fluid too. And that was in 2000 and I believe 14 when that paper, her book was 2009, I believe, and the paper was 2014. And since then, there's been other studies that have explored the fluidity of sexual attraction,

both among women and men. It definitely seems that among women, it is much more sexually fluid, but we're also seeing that with men, it can also be fluid too. Not that every guy, and what, so this does not mean that you can sort of wake up and consciously choose or un-choose your attraction. That's the big misunderstanding when you're talking about sexual fluidity. It is not something that you just wake up and choose who you want to be attracted to. What it's talking about is different circumstances in life that have an effect on your sexual attraction. So this is not sort of a backdoor to orientation change. And that's how some conservative Christians have taken the idea of sexual fluidity, that

it pretty much proves that you can change your sexual orientation. And that is not at all what these psychologists and scientists are arguing for. So another one who argues for sexual fluidity is Jane Ward. There is an interesting book, fascinating book. I don't recommend it because it's pretty, well, it's got some pictures in it that I would not recommend people looking at, but it's called Not Gay, Sex Between Straight White Men.. It's a whole fascinating study. Of like a lot of kind of underground movements. In the last hundred years. Where straight men.

Are having sex with other straight men. Whether it's college hazing. Or military rituals. Or biker gangs. Or you know kind of like a bathroom hookup culture. Or whatever. But for all intents and purposes. These are not gay men.

They are straight men who, for whatever reason, want to have periodic sex with other straight men. More than you wanted to know, but she would be another advocate for this idea of sexual fluidity. And also Rebecca Jordan Young in her book Brainstorm, which is a fascinating book, also talks about sexual fluidity. And they cite many, many other studies that do. So all that to say, yes, sexuality, sexual attraction can often be more fluid than people make it out to be. Now, here's the thing. With younger people, and by younger, I mean, let's just say 20 and younger, they're referred to as kind of the Gen Z, Generation Z, 20 and under, 18 and under. And there is a much greater aversion to anything binary in younger people, meaning the whole idea of being gay or straight or male or female,

these binary categories, they just don't resonate with people that are part of the Generation Z. I'll never forget talking to a bunch of friends of mine who were pretty informed on matters of sexuality and gender. And one of them had a daughter there who was, I think, in her maybe 20, 19 or 20. And she was listening in and everything, a really, really sharp, wonderful girl. And towards the end of the conversation, we asked her, so what do you think about all this? She goes, well, this is really interesting. I mean, you guys are really kind of more informed than most older people.

But she goes, the one thing that really stands out is you guys keep using binary categories like male and female or gay or straight or transgender or cisgender. Like she says, me and my friends, we just, we talk in non-binary categories. And that really, and when she said that, I was like, oh, totally. Like I absolutely see that. And there's a, for the question, there's a fascinating article called Beyond He or She in Time Magazine that came out last summer. I believe it's free online right now. Just Google Beyond He or She. I would highly recommend reading the article. It's incredibly informative on all the attraction to non-binary categories among younger people, especially. I mean, the population as a whole, about three or 4% would identify as LGBTQ. Let's just say LGBT. But according to one survey said that with younger people, it's like close to 50% don't identify as exclusively gay or straight. Like something in the middle.

Like everything has to be in the middle. Not everything has to be, but I mean, it's much more common for younger people to choose identities that are categories of in-betweenness. I mean, if I have a nickel for every junior high girl that I meet these days when I go speak at youth groups, I mean, I would say the majority of girls I talk to identify as bisexual. Not gay, not straight, not lesbian, but bisexual. Now, bisexuality is pretty rare.

If you read science journals and stuff on bisexuality, the reason why it hasn't gotten a lot of attention in a lot of studies is because it is on paper so rare. So the fact that, you know, 25 or 50% of girls I talk to in church identify as bisexual, that there might be something else going on there. It might be, partially, it might be influenced, not totally due to, but influenced by this ideological attraction to categories and identities that are non-binary. Are they going through a phase? Is it pure ideology? Is it, or is it genuine sexual fluidity? You know what? It's probably a combination of all three without being able to pin one down against the other on every single situation so this is where you do have to be careful you cannot

simply say this is just a phase or you're not really bisexual you're just exploring yourself or you know you'll you'll be you'll be back you know you'll be straight again or you'll be gay again or whatever like that you just you can't really make assumptions about what's really going on inside of people. But as you step back and kind of consider the situation, yes, I mean, there is ideological pressures and explorations happening, especially with younger people in terms of things that are non-binary. So to answer your question, is sexual attraction fluid or fixable? One's general orientation is typically much more fixed, but sexual attraction within general orientations, gay or straight, are more fluid. So it's not like you swing from gay to straight to straight to gay.

Psychologically, I'm saying, but there typically is much more fluidity than people realize, especially among girls or women, and especially prior to the age of 20 or 25. There's a lot more fluidity going on there. Next question. Should we follow the early creeds or can scripture trump the creeds? I've been wrestling with this one for a long time. And it's, gosh, I'm just going to think out loud with you here how I've processed this. I've typically defaulted to the early creeds. And by early creeds, I mean, in particular, the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Chalcedonian Creed, the Creed of Chalcedon.

These deal with like Trinity Trinity, deity of Christ, and other core doctrines that most Christians would simply affirm or assume today. And that's been my default. It's kind of like, well, in terms of the essentials, in terms of Orthodox Christianity, in terms of the basic stuff you should believe if you claim Christ, then just go to the creeds, affirm that, and then everything else is kind of secondary from there. In general, I'm okay with that. I think that's not a bad approach. However, the creeds, I don't know, they do have a much more Western feel to them.

Now, they included Eastern authorities, I believe, as well. But when I look at the Eastern church, the more I've been looking at the Eastern church, it seems to have a very different expression than the Western church. And so I don't want to read these creeds through the lens, just through the lens of Western eyes, but really consider how the Eastern church has taken and appealed to the creed. That's one thing. Number two, as somebody who believes in scripture alone, a solo scriptura, meaning scripture is the ultimate authority over all tradition, reason, and experience.

If I hold to that and I do hold to that, then I have to say that scripture can trump the creeds even. Now, I believe in the creeds, not just because of the creeds, not just because I like the cool dudes that formulated them, but because when I look at the creeds and I study scripture, the creeds do seem to capture what is revealed in scripture. So it's not either or. I do think the creeds represent basic doctrines in the scriptures. My hesitation with, well, here's my questions with the creeds is they are still culturally, geographically, and time bound. They do represent in one period of church history how certain leaders with certain presuppositions and certain interpretive lenses have studied and interpreted the scriptures. And that is still fallible. Like, I don't think the creeds are

inspired. And I've often wondered like, okay, they were addressing, they were writing the creeds in response to certain needs of the day. A lot of them were in response to like Gnosticism or other heresies that were floating around in the day, Marcionism and others. But those aren't necessarily the needs of today. What are the needs of today that we need to cultivate our own sort of definitive responses to? And that opens up a whole other door of discussion. I mean, and we have other creeds throughout church history,

the Baptist Confession of 1689 or 1646, or there's other Baptist confessions or other Reformed confessions. And these are also in response to specific needs of their own particular day. And so my question is, should we not rely so blindly on early creeds? Should we take those as a good framework, as a decent, you know, starting point, but should we look to what are the needs today that we need to respond to and go back to the early creeds and go back to scripture and formulate our own sort of orthodoxy, if you will. So when we determine what is essential to the faith and what is non-essential, my biggest question I've been wrestling with over the last year or so is not just what is essential and what isn't essential, what is primary and what is secondary. My biggest question is how do we determine what is primary and what is secondary? When we talk about orthodoxy and

heterodoxy or heresy, my question is not so much what's heresy and what's not. It is, how do we determine what is heresy and what's not? Well, you go to scripture. Well, that's nice. Sure. We go to scripture, but scripture has to be interpreted and people interpret it differently. And well, if it's clear in scripture, then it's essential. It's like, well, that's nice. Sure. We go to scripture, but scripture has to be interpreted and people interpret it differently. And well, if it's clear in scripture, then it's essential. It's like, well, that's a subjective statement too. I mean, some of my friends say that a pre-tribulational rapture or younger theology is clear in scripture and everybody has their own idea of what is clear in scripture. So yeah, it gets really messy. One of the big things that I do like to include in this conversation, Again, the question is,

should we follow the early creeds or can scripture trump the early creeds? One thing that I like to do is cross-check whatever I think is essential to the Christian faith, cross-check it to how global, in particular, majority world Christians are saying about essentials and non-essential. Because if it truly is essential to the Christian faith here, then it should be essential to the Christian faith everywhere. And oftentimes what we think in the Western modern church is essential or not essential may not resonate with the majority world who So who is wrestling with scripture? So I want to obviously put my faith primarily in scripture, use scripture to determine what is primary and secondary, but then also cross-check my interpretation of scripture with the global, in particular, the majority world branches of Christianity and not be so

ethnocentric that I think that my Western reading is the superior one. Much more to say about that, but let's keep going. We have two more questions here. Should the Book of Enoch be in the canon? The question is, I'd like to know if you have read the Book of Enoch and whether or not you believe it should be included in the canon of Scripture. Why or why not? The quick answer to that is yes, I've read it many times.

I spent a lot of time in the Book of Enoch, especially during my dissertation when I was doing my PhD, and have very much enjoyed the Book of Enoch. But no, I don't think it should be scripture. So what is the Book of Enoch? The Book of Enoch, in particular, 1 Enoch, and there's another book that's referred to as 2 Enoch, and there's another book called that's referred to as second Enoch. One Enoch is a composite book that included five other books written over a period of about 200 years from the mid third century BC to the mid first century AD. So one Enoch is actually a composite of five different books written over a few hundred years.

It was not the book of Enoch. First of all, the book of Enoch was not written by Enoch. The author does not think he is the actual Enoch, and he didn't expect other people to think he was the actual author of Enoch. It was pretty common in pseudepigraphic literature between the Testaments or apocalyptic literature in particular between the Testaments to have a deliberate pseudonym, pseudo author, where you kind of take on the perspective of an ancient biblical figure and write the book through that person's lens, but not, you don't really believe that you are that person, nor do you want other people to believe that you are that person. So it's not written by Enoch, nobody thought it was. It does capture a lot of really interesting themes going on in Judaism at that time. For instance, one of the things that really stands

out from the book of Enoch is that the Messiah is referred to as the son of man and is that seems to be both divine and human or at least a figure that is more than human and this is uh you know pre-new testament or at least right around the time of the new testament and it shows that here is a non-christian jewish book that is anticipating a coming messiah that is more than human so it kind of lays a little bit of groundwork, gives a kind of running start to some of the expressions about Jesus, in particular in the Gospel of John, but in the Synoptic Gospels as a whole. I don't think it should be included in the canon because the early Jews didn't include Enoch in the canon.

When the Old Testament canon was pretty much closed and decided upon by Judaism in the first century, Enoch was the canon. When the Old Testament canon was pretty much closed and decided upon by Judaism in the first century, Enoch was not in there. It was considered, you know, by a lot of Jews, valuable piece of religious literature, very helpful, kind of like a modern day commentary, if you will, or like purpose-driven life or your best life now or crazy love or, you know, like good spiritual literature that has had a tremendous effect on the way Christians think today. That's how one Enoch was considered back then. But for the most part, for most Jews, it was not considered to be scripture. Now, there was a group of Jews that

some scholars refer to as sort of Enochic, as in Enoch, Enochic Judaism, that might have considered Enoch to be scripture, but that was not mainstream. That would have been limited to that sect of Judaism. So Christians in the first century simply adopted the Jewish canon. Enoch was not part of the Jewish canon, so therefore Enoch was not part of the canon of scripture. Now Enoch is not part of the Apocrypha. What we call the Apocrypha, Enoch was not part of it. Enoch is part of the canon of scripture. Now Enoch is not part of the Apocrypha. What we call the Apocrypha, Enoch was not part of it. Enoch is part of a collection of writings that we refer to as the Old Testament pseudepigrapha. So don't think that the Catholic Church or Eastern Church has adopted Enoch into their canon. It is not adopted into any canon. The Apocrypha is, but Enoch is not

part of the so-called Apocrypha. Apocrypha being like the Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, 1 and 2 Maccabees, 1 and 2 Maccabees, and other books. That's the Apocrypha. That is in some of our canons, but the book of Enoch was not included in the Apocrypha. Last question, should women serve in leadership? Last question, should women serve in leadership? The questioner says, I've been wrestling with the issue of church leadership and women for a few months now as my church is seeking to make a decision in this area, and I am on our leadership team. We have read two views on women in ministry.

That's a great book, by the way, if you want to wrestle with this question. And I have done my own seeking and exploring through the Bible. I have not been able to decide whether the egalitarian or complementarian view is most consistent with scripture by reading it through the lens that this is an ancient text and not a 21st century Western writing. You say, I thoroughly respect the process by which you have come to make decisions on violence and nonviolence, LGBTQ affirming or non-affirming, and ECT or annihilation positions. What are your thoughts on this one as I feel the weightiness of the situation for a whole host of reasons? I love the spirit of the question, and this is where the spirit of your question is, this should be the spirit of everybody's question if they're

wrestling with this issue. I know for a lot of people, this is a non-issue. They are so committed to the women in ministry position that even asking the question is almost offensive. And on the other side, by even entertaining this as a question, some people would consider you to be a heretic. And, you know, maybe, you know, they're starting to light the fire, ready to burn you at the stake. Um, I think the best view is probably somewhere in between that. And let me be frank. Uh, I don't know if your name's Frank or not, but let me be Frank. I have not dug into this question as thoroughly as I should. I've been very occupied with other questions related to sexuality and gender for sure. And, other questions related to sexuality and gender, for

sure, and questions related to hell and violence and nonviolence, and I just have not given the same studious attention that this question deserves. As you may know, I was raised in a very strong complementarian Christian subculture, meaning women should not be in leadership. In fact, churches that believe women should be in leadership are hyper-liberal. They don't believe the Bible. That was kind of the perspective I grew up with. I do not hold to that kind of complementarian any longer at all, really. In fact, I just talked to a few of my friends the other day who were raised in similar environments and asked them, one guy in particular, you know, are you still a complementarian? And he

kind of looked at me and said, well, barely. And that's been my answer over the last, I would say, couple of years is, you know, I guess I would still barely be complementarian, but that's largely due to the fact that that's simply the environment I was raised in. It's the way I've read scripture whenever I look at this question, and I haven't given the time it needs to revisit it. Now, the time I have given to this question through teaching and various conversations and various kind of studies that I've plugged in here and there, I have seen that this question is more difficult than both than the extremes make it out to be. I think there's a lot of biblical questions that aren't that easy to answer. There's a lot of passages that are difficult to understand.

1 Timothy 2, which says women shouldn't teach or exercise authority over men, is not a slam dunk in favor of the complementarian view. There is some very interesting word usage there. There's some interesting cultural background that needs to be unearthed. First Corinthians is a real complicated book to use in this conversation because you have women prophesying in 1 Corinthians 11, and then they're told to be silent in 1 Corinthians 14, and Paul doesn't even seem to recognize the tension or even contradiction there. You know, are they prophesying or not? You have female prophets. Clearly you have female prophets in the New Testament. Well, is a prophet an authoritative position in a church or not? And I don't know

if there's a super quick and easy answer to that. We have clearly, I don't even like the phrase women in ministry. In fact, I hate that phrase because women can and should serve in all kinds of ministry positions. Phoebe was clearly a minister. I mean, she was actually called a deacon, in Romans 16, 1 and 2, and probably was the one who carried the letter to the Roman church and read Paul's letter to the Romans out loud. It was probably a woman named Phoebe. Priscilla and Aquila and Lydia in Acts chapter 16 seemed to be on some level in charge of house churches, or at least were they in charge of the leadership or the hospitality? Did Lydia own the house church and run the house church, or did she just own the home that they met at? Same thing with Mary in Acts chapter 10 or 12,

one of those two chapters. Anyway, the evidence that is often cited to support both views, you know, it is more complicated than some people make it out to be. The one big one for me and why I would still be I guess in the complementarian camp is that the New Testament is profoundly and counter-culturally liberating towards women I mean you read the life of Christ and it's like golly he was pushing the envelope with empowering women and I would say Paul sometimes Paul gets accused of being some, you know, patriarchal bigot, but I think Paul, he does have some hard statements about women in 1 Corinthians 11 and Ephesians 5 and other passages. And, you know, 1 Peter has some tough ones too, but Paul also says some really counter-cultural stuff in favor of empowering women too. Like, I don't think

we can just write Paul off as being some patriarchal bigot, especially if you believe in the inspiration of scripture, that's a whole nother question. But no, Paul makes some really radical statements that would have got him in, in, he would have, you know, if he was in the bath houses in Rome and talking about women as positively as he did, he would have gotten rushed out naked, thrown on the streets in front of the bath house. I mean, he pushed the envelope. Jesus especially pushed the envelope. But here's the thing. Why do we still have 12 male apostles? Why do we not see any clear evidence of a female elder or formal leader in the church that, you know, the prophets, female prophets would be the closest we have. But Paul writes letters to Timothy and Titus and talks about elders being one women, men, and so on and so forth.

So as you can see, I am trying to be excessively biblical here. Emotionally, practically, even logically, I would say absolutely women can serve in ministry. Why not? Or leadership. Like I don't, half the people that we're leading are women. And there's nothing intrinsic to femaleness that says they can't be leaders. So, so just experientially and emotionally and even logically, like I have zero problem. My only hangup and why I'm not yet full-blown passionately egalitarian is that the New Testament does not seem to be unambiguously supporting women in positions of leadership in the local church.

But again, upon further study, if I wrestle with 1 Timothy through and look at all the research that's been done on it and do more research on 1 Corinthians, I have no qualms about going egalitarian. In fact, here's the thing. Most of the ministry I do today, the people that I join with and the people I minister with are full-on egalitarian. When I appointed the board to my ministry, I specifically appointed mostly egalitarians. Most of the churches, almost all the churches that I minister to in are egalitarians. I'm

working with female pastors who are amazing leaders and speakers. And so for me, it's just really, it's really, I mean, I don't, to me, it's almost like a non-issue practically in the sense that I, yeah, I have no problem joining arms with people who have a view different than the one that I grew up with. I've seen so many brilliant, wise, capable women who have spoken into my life, who have prophesied over me and, yeah, just have tremendous respect for the women that I minister alongside and with and under. Again, my only hesitation is with the biblical text and the biblical arguments. I just want to make sure. I just want to make sure that my beliefs are not just practical or rational or logical or emotional or relational. I want to be able to go to the New Testament and say that my view on this question resonates with and flows from the New Testament.

The New Testament talked a lot about leadership and women and ministry and all the ingredients are there. Does it say something about this contemporary question? And I do think the best argument in favor of the egalitarian view, or as one of my friends, one of my board members, Dave Beeland, he says, I don't like the phrase egalitarian. I refer to it as non-hierarchical complementarian because he believes that men and women do complement each other, that sex difference matters, and that these are beautiful things that men and women aren't the same,

but it shouldn't be hierarchical, is his view. And I like the way he expresses that. But the one argument that I think is really attractive to me is the so-called trajectory argument, that even if the New Testament doesn't come right out and say women are serving in leadership in the first century church, that it provides a trajectory that's clearly moving in that direction. And that maybe for overarching systemic cultural reasons, the New Testament didn't buck the system as hard as they maybe could have,

but that they, kind of like with slavery, like they didn't end the institution of slavery, but they kind of gutted it from the inside out, and they launched a church on a trajectory that would eventually protest and end slavery when the cultural moment was right. I can see a very similar argument working for women in leadership. But again, I haven't exhausted that argument. But who knows? When I explore it, maybe I will be egalitarian. My name is Preston Sprinkle. Thanks for listening to Theology in the Raw. We will see you? Yeah. I mean, we spend $9.99 on Spotify, but hearing my stomach rumbling, not worth a dime.

Not worth a dime. Yeah. Not worth a dime. Not even worth one. One. Or if I had a suit and tie, maybe I'd be worth your time. Only money on your mind, because we are so selfish. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Jesus walked with the poor. Are we too good for that? Kissing up to God in our prayers to get a promotion, to make more money and buy more things that we don't need, that we just buy to show off for the next guy. And still feel poor inside.

Still feel homeless as the person that we just did not. By the way, how have you treated the least of these? Pride and money, are you a slave to them Cause you ain't gotta be black To pick hot We've been lost All around us All around us

Try to keep What we don't know At a distance, at a distance We don't listen Pray to God for the day that we can Put our guns down and see him in all of our face Can't you see with the hands of the master we made We don't enjoy the creation of art on display

So blind but we look at each other I don't want you not to see my color See our differences are not the weakness And in this puzzle we gon' need the master's masterpieces Feel like we all conceited thinking you'd be better if you was more like me Not knowing it was God that made you more like you Made in his image we are all his kids so if I look down on you I look down on him man I'm a sinner you a sinner what's the difference we all

need love joy Jesus and healing we got a lot in common if we would just listen instead of building more walls let's build more bridges. We build more bridges. At a distance We don't listen Ooh Ooh Oh, yeah Oh Ooh Oh, yeah.