Theology in the Raw - Women and Slavery in the New Testament and Early Church: Dr. Lynn Cohick

Episode Date: August 8, 2024

Lynn H. Cohick earned her PhD in NT and Christian Origins from the University of Pennsylvania. She is distinguished professor of NT at Houston Christian University, and director of the Houston Theological Seminary. She has written commentaries on Ephesians and Philippians, and books on women in the NT, including Christian Women in the Patristic World and Women in the World of the Earliest Christians. In this conversations, we talk about Lynn's latest research on freed female slaves in the New Testament world and how this shapes our reading of the household codes, and also the role and impact that women had on the church in the first few hundred years of Christianity. Register for the Austin conference on sexualtiy (Sept 17-18) here: https://www.centerforfaith.com/programs/leadership-forums/faith-sexuality-and-gender-conference-live-in-austin-or-stream-online Register for the Exiles 2 day conference in Denver (Oct 4-5) here: https://theologyintheraw.com/exiles-denver/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey friends, I'm going to be in Austin, Texas, September 17th to 18th, that's a life family church doing a two day conference on faith, sexuality and gender. If you want to register for that conference, you can go to center for faith.com click on the events tab and you can go from there. Also October 4th to 5th, we have our two day exiles of Babylon conference in Denver, Colorado. All the information is that theology and the rod.com. Uh, we are talking about discipleship in this very volatile election year. Uh, we are talking about fake news, propaganda and healthy media consumption. We're talking about sexuality after purity culture and, uh, it's going to be a doozy. So you're not going to want to miss that conference. I can't wait for it. So, um, all the information for the excellence conferences at the all

general.com, the sexuality conference in Austin center for faith.com. My guest today is dr. Lynn Kohick, who earned her PhD in new Testament and Christian origins from the university of Pennsylvania. She is currently distinguished professor of new Testament at Houston Christian university and director of the Houston theological seminar. She's written a bunch of books, an excellent commentary on Ephesians. And another excellent commentary on Philippians. She's written books on women in the new Testament, including this one right here, which is women in the world of the earliest Christians, illuminating ancient ways of life. She is one of my favorite new Testament scholars. She's actually credible. So in this conversation, we talk about the status of freed slave women in the first century and how that impacts our

understanding of the household codes. And we talk about women in the church in the first few hundred years of Christianity. So we go pretty deep into some historical issues. So I think you will enjoy it. So please welcome back to the show, the one and only Dr. Lynn Kohen. All right. Welcome back to theology in the raw. Lynn, I'm so excited to have another conversation with you. Dr. Susan Lipscomb Thanks, Preston. I love being with you, talking about all kinds of fun stuff. Preston Pysh Well, I'm still knee deep in my ongoing research on women and leadership, according to the New Testament. Well, the whole Bible really, but New Testament in particular.

And I thoroughly, thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed reading parts of your commentary on Ephesians. You're, you're stuff on Ephesians five parts, which parts did you like? So I know what to edit next time. Well, I, I, uh, specifically Ephesians five. I mean, that, that was really, well, I went to camp out, but then you have to deal with, you know, Kefale and chapter four, chapter one. And I just thought you had, so here's my, I guess, frustration is I think some people are so passionate about their certain conclusion about what the Bible says about women that I am, say, under impressed with their ex Jesus. This happens on both sides, you know, with anybody, anybody that's leading with like a strong activist

kind of spirit, sometimes like, I don't know if you're treating the other side fair, like you're, I don't know. And I just felt like you did not, you were so, I feel like you prioritize extremely careful, responsible exegesis and still arrived at, you know, your position, but I felt like you were very thorough with the text and I just, yeah.

Well, thank you. Yeah. Thank you. You mentioned Keffale. And I also, I read your argument that you made recently about Keffale potentially meaning head in the kind of leader way by looking at the Septuagint. And I thought to myself, oh, I hope I get a chance to talk with Preston soon because I don't line up. In fact, I'm kind of like

the opposite. So I thought I would. Oh no, that's scary. I don't want to disagree with Lynn Cohen. No, not at all. No, but I just wanted you to tease out more. When I, the big question I had for you, although I realize you're the one that's supposed to ask the question, this is your podcast, but I love what you wrote. And yet when it comes to Septuagint evidence, I see the Septuagint evidence as less important because it is a translation. So they're given the text that they have to do.

So like in, there's a couple places where it's head and tail. And so then of course, it's going to be kephale because that is the only thing that would make sense. Most of the time, it's archon or proto, something like leader or first. But there are a few places in the Septuagint, especially in judges, where they stick with Kefale for Roche. And I just thought, my thought would have been a Greek speaker who was just talking like how they would be raised to talk wouldn't use it, but if they're bound to a text and are translating it, then it complicates matters. So it's not like primary evidence, but it's a translation, thus a secondary level of evidence, but you see it differently. So I just love to hear a little bit more of like what that, yeah.

Yeah. Where you were going, I wasn't prepared to talk about this. Lynn, you put it on, I'm pulling up my, I'm pulling up. No, I, I, um, let me go back and, uh, oh yeah. Okay. So back in November, I wrote that blog in the set to agent. Well, first of all, my thoughts on the, on the Kefle are 75% like I'm more than willing to, in fact, I was because of some of the people that advocate advocate for Kefle meaning head leader and authority and everything, because I haven't been impressed with their scholarship elsewhere. I don't want to name names for this, you know, but I'm like going into the study as like, I know there's a big disagreement

on this. I'm probably going to disagree with these scholars saying carefully means leader with it. But then when I looked at it, I was like, ah, I think they're on to something here. So I will say though, it is a very good point that of the 170, whatever times Roche is used Roche is the Hebrew word for head. And it's over 170 times it's used. Yeah. But how did you 180? Yeah. To refer to a leader, to the chief, the one in authority, there's only, and there's disputes about this, let's just say eight to 16 times when Roche is translated with the Greek word, Keffale. And I think that is that, that's a really important thing. If Keffale was a very natural Greek word for leader, why is it rarely used to translate? Now some people say, yeah,

but it's still eight times. It's still 16 times and Catholic Catholic never means you count the, yeah. And 16, if you count the repetitions, I think that's that and, and that's fair. I, you know, I get that, but it's not a brand new, uh, citing, but, um, yeah, no, I think, yeah. I mean, you're right. That, that's where the, uh, if Keflavie meant leader, just do it a hundred percent of the time, not less than almost about 2% of the time. Yeah. Yeah. So I, I, yeah. But then the other argument is, well, it never means source. So for, if we're comparing leader source, the preeminence one, I never means source. So for, if we're comparing leader source, the preeminence one, I think you take preeminence right. And in Ephesians

five, a little bit more than that. Yeah. Yeah. That's where I go. I need to revisit. I know there was a significant article and, and at the first read, I wasn't as impressed, but I read it again. Like, Oh, there might be something here. The question is, if it does mean preeminence, does that mean not any kind of authority? Because most people that are preeminent, like a king or something, or a father in a patriarchal, you know, also conveys authority. But is that what the words get out there? Anyway, it's no, I know. Yeah, it, I think preeminence and having authority over, they can overlap in certain contexts and in other contexts. You know, like George Clooney is preeminent among, let's say, actors, right? And apparently in politics a little bit now too. But as far

as his influence goes, but he doesn't have authority in the kind of way like an officer of the law would have authority, you know, or someone in an official position might have an authority. So I might say preeminence and influence often pair up, but not necessarily preeminence and authority. But anyway, I just, when I read your work, I really liked it. And I thought, oh, next time I see him, I want to ask him about Septuagint evidence.

Sorry for that little ride. Not at all. I would love to in the future, I mean, I would love to have you like shoot some thoughts your way and see what you think. I mean, I'm desperate to invite as many people to analyze my thoughts on this. Cause again, I know people don't believe me, but I really am trying to come at it.

And I think I am coming at it from a very curious exegetical position. I'm not part of any tree. I don't need to land anywhere. You know, I've got sympathies with both sides. I've got people I respect to both sides, but I just, I truly, it's so cliched. I don't want to say it, but I truly just want to get the text right. So, um, all right, let's talk about you. Um, I, so one of the reasons why I wanted to bring you on is because you've done a lot of work with, uh, the women in the church post new Testament pre say Constantine and

that I don't need to cut off. That's just, that's kind of where people cut off going to the early church. But I would love to have you help us understand with what, what role women had in the church in those few hundred years. But you, you also said you are currently working on freed women, women that were slaves that were freed. Can we start there? Cause that's even that category. I think people like, what does that even mean? Why is that significant? What are the implications? So yeah, turn it over to you.

Absolutely. Yeah. Well, thinking about Ephesians again, I kind of live there. In fact, my volume on Ephesians in the proclamation, Preaching the New Testament series that Wiffenstock is doing, that will be coming out at some point. I haven't seen the galleys, the galley proofs yet, but they at least have my draft. So I'm constantly thinking in Ephesians and household codes and that sort of thing. Of course, the household codes also includes admonitions to slaves and owners. So that's how I kind of enter into this. And there's been recent work done on the category of freed, the freed slave, which has been

really good work. But it takes as its model, which won't necessarily surprise you, as the male. So I have a lot of evidence in the ancient world on men who were previously slaves and then became freed. And there's that category. They aren't free, right? They don't become free, they become freed. So it's a separate category. And a lot of times these freed slaves become citizens as well.

Or there's a secondary category where they're almost citizens, but they're sort of exalted more than the average person. With that, the slave, say this man has a particular skill either in doing numbers or in trade or whatever it might be for the family business. And now as a freed person, he has much more involvement with the family as a whole. So it's a win-win. The patriarch of the family has enlarged his family in a certain way and this freedman is a part of things and their honor is increased. But when I started looking at, okay, is this the same for women? Because women didn't earn

money in the same way. There was a lot of talk about the peculiar, the money that slaves could earn, so to speak, on the side and use that then for their freedom. But women tended not to have jobs that would then be marketable. So then you have, okay, women, are they going to earn their freedom? Not in the same way that men would. So as I explored it a little bit more, what we find is, I don't know, maybe half of women who are freed women are also then married to their previous owner. Like, that's how women in so many ways, that's how women experienced being in the category of freed.

So their owner freed them and then in a second step married them or the son of the family married them. So that just put a whole new complexion to me on understanding the household codes. And I started thinking, okay, we've got the church in Ephesus and we know there are slaves and owners in that household, but they've got up or that house church, but there also have to be freed people. So what if you had a husband and wife that actually from a public standpoint would be the patron with his wife slash client. Because what we find is that when a man is freed, he goes from slave to freedman, his previous owner now becomes the patron. And the freedman doesn't have complete freedom. He still needs to stay connected with the family. He has to give part of his earnings to the family. He can't move without approval. So, I mean, there's still a real tight connection. And

the big thing is that the owner becomes a patron. Well, with the woman being freed and then married, the husband is also her patron and let's say she marries another freed slave in that household, okay? Well, that husband and the former owner who is now the then have sexual rights over the woman. So, the patron has more sexual rights, I don't know, than the husband does. Really? Wow. In this case, yeah. I don't know of other circumstances like this. So, the Romans really took this freed category and this idea you were giving the slave a benefit. That's why the owner is now a patron. But with women, it just was, it also often, not usually,

I wouldn't say, but in a good percentage of the times it included marriage. So then I just tried to wrap my head around. When Paul says to the husbands, love your wives as your own bodies, and I think, how we know what owners did to the bodies of slaves. What would need, like how would these owners, now patrons and husbands, how would it have to change in their mind to now treat this female body who's now his wife, who he's now one with in a nonviolent way when previously, you know, it was acceptable? Anyway, so that's how I kind of got into it. Sorry to go on and on. No, I got a bunch of- That's how I kind of got into this.

A bunch of questions. So the man who married his former, his freed slave, first of all, was he single or did his wife pass away or, cause most men would have been already married, right? Yes, but it could be, so it wouldn't be polygamy cause that didn't, or even bigamy, that didn't exist in Roman culture. So yes, they would have been a widow, widower, or if it's the son of the family, then that may have been his first marriage. Okay. Because as I say, if a man was wealthy enough to own a slave, most likely would have been married, right? But he could have been widowed. So, okay, widowed or the son of a, okay. Would that have been stigmatized for a Greco-Roman male to marry a freed slave? Would that be seen as looked down upon or not necessarily?

Well, I mean, that is a great question. It doesn't appear to be. The honor that is involved with, that the owner receives in releasing the slave to be freed and the woman receiving now when she is married, she becomes a matron. So she is expected to uphold her chastity is maybe not the right word, but you know what I mean? The sexual purity, puticitia is the Latin there. She's expected to uphold that and that is an honor for her. It's good that she is expected to be pure in a way that as a slave, she would have no rights over her body. What percentage of slave, I think something like 20% of the population

were slaves or something like that. Was it divided male female pretty evenly or are there a lot more male slaves or do we really know? No, I don't think, well, I don't know the answer to that. And the evidence for women, just broadly speaking, in the Greco-Roman world is sketchy. It's not as much. We have to duplicate the findings that we have to some extent because I think it's like what one to a ratio of like maybe one tenth of the material saved is about women. So it may be a little higher

in the epigraphic evidence. And of course, we have a lot of information from Rome, which had a very high percentage of slaves, male and female, especially Imperial slaves. And then in like a big city like Ephesus, you would have a lot of Imperial freedmen. Okay. Interesting. Just briefly, can you talk to, you know, I kind of mentioned it, but the treatment of slaves, like, so, I mean, my understanding, Clark, if I'm wrong, is that it can range from just highly, highly abusive, physically, sexually, all the way to the slave could be a well-educated like doctor and be kind of just like a, I hate even saying this, but, but would be treated relatively, relatively, like not be beaten or whatever, or sexually abused. Is that,

is that a correct perspective that there's a whole spectrum of how they were treated? And can you, can we estimate how many would have been ruthlessly abused? You know, and then my, my, I guess my, my motivation here is I understand that the, the, the Paul in the new Testament radically reframes slave slavery, right? I mean, even in diffusion six, when he says, you know, masters likewise, like he tell you, no, he commands a slave and he says masters likewise. Like he puts up on par even the idea of them eating a meal together and eating the same foods like sitting next to each other. Like if somebody saw that a master and a slave treating each other as equals, even though they're socially not.

So there's profound, there's a profound radicalness here that's being reshaped, but you still have masters and slaves, you know, like that, that's, that's just weird to think about. So yeah, go, going back to like, was it most common for slaves to be really mistreated or do we not really know which ones would have been abused and which would have been treated relatively well? I think I'll start even a little bit earlier and say from my perspective, the Greco-Roman world was just a very violent world. Kids were beaten in school.

We know that. We see that in artwork for heaven sakes. The Judea captive coins that show a bound, crouching woman with the soldier standing over her. She is representative of Judea. And the other imperial art that just stresses so much domination and power over the other by force. And then you have the gladiatorial games. You have where unlike in our videos today, you can't smell the blood. Then you would have, like you would have, it was real. So I think just recognizing that the violence permeated culture and sexual availability of children maybe over the age of let's say six or seven, I mean we're not talking real,

real young, depending on their class and social standing, was just there. We see that in frescoes, represented in frescoes and in literature. So I think we want to start with the violence that slaves experienced was more than a free person. But I can't imagine that a free son didn't get hit every once in a while by his teacher or by his father. It's just how the culture was. So that said, certainly if your slave had more value to you, then you would treat the body of that slave with a little more respect. I don't think we can overstate the brutality of that system, but I think we should also state it didn't happen to every single slave. I think just in general, Preston, when you think about human nature, if you give a lot of authority

to one person over another person, a lot of the time the sin nature is going to kick in and there's going to be abuse. What was that study that was done at Stanford a couple of decades ago, where they were sort of some students, this professor was doing this, some students were taking the role of prisoners, others were taking the role of guards. These were all just your basic average, I don't know, sophomores in college. Within like two weeks or less, they had to shut the experiment down because these young men who were taking the role of guards had become so abusive to the prisoners or taking the role of the prisoner. Yeah, and I just think that's kind of what happens when a system is in place that gives a lot of leeway and authority for one person over another.

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you know, that was obviously addressed, that they were different? I mean, for one, you assume, well, you hope to assume that they were trying to live out a Christian ethic that wouldn't have allowed for a master sexually abusing their slave or even physically abusing. Um, uh, but, and you also don't see Paul addressing it, right? I mean, he, he doesn't, he does say treat them in the same way that you just see kind of a leveling of the social playing field a bit, but you don't see Paul directly addressing, you know, masters stop beating your slaves or

whatever. So can we assume, is that a valid assumption that the Christian masters, I hate even saying that, but the Christian masters would have treated them differently? Here's where I think the expectation and the framework for the church may have helped. Paul insists on calling fellow believers brothers and sisters, right? Adelphoi, which although it's in the masculine plural means, brothers and sisters in these contexts. You tend not to have violence between siblings talked about much and it's certainly not in the expectation. Like the siblings, yes, you have the firstborn and younger brothers.

I think Plutarch has a piece on this like he does so many other things, his opinions. But just this idea that there's a sense of camaraderie between siblings and not rivalry, that that language may have helped reframe how individual church members interacted with each other. We see examples with Enphilemon of Paul saying, treat him as a brother. So using that sibling language when talking about on SMS, I think the marriages, seeing Andronicus and Junia, I'm just assuming they're married instead of brother and sister, but it would work either way. And also with Priscilla and Aquila,

that you see like a partnership there, a doing ministry together there, that might give us a little hint, maybe as they're doing this. Yeah, that's helpful. Yeah, super helpful. Let's transition to women in the patristic world. So after the New Testament, let's start with what sources are we looking at when we look at how women, what kinds of positions women had in the local church and then what were, what does the evidence show us?

One of the earliest is Ignatius of Antioch. So he's early second century. He wrote a number of letters to churches in Asia Minor on his way to his death in Rome. In one of those letters, I think it's to the Svernans, he mentions a category called virgins also called widows. Are you familiar with that little phrase? And it comes up because people are wondering in the pastoral epistles when Paul says that a young widow should remarry, it's postulated and I think it's a pretty credible argument that maybe what both Paul and Ignatius are referring to are women who are of the age of marrying, let's say in their 20s, but have not married, but there's no real, there's no like, I don't know, category of a young professional, you know, trying to make it in the city or something, right? You know, and make her own way and

have her career and all that. That all that. There is nothing like that back then. So the category of a woman at that age that is appropriately modest would be widow. And so it may be that you had this category from very early on in the church of widows, some of whom were actual widows as we would call them, and others might have just been pledged virgins, but the society didn't yet have a category to really make sense other than the Vestal Virgins, which is a completely different kind of organization category. So that's early on there, you have this group, widows, and I think as the church grows towards the fourth century, this group of widows becomes more and more important. They function as prayers and those who pray in the church and potentially participate in the running of the church. You also have

female deacons. We have evidence of that pretty clearly going through. One way that the female deacons are very important is with the ritual of baptism because people as adults who are baptized, they go into the water naked. And so while the bishop might be presiding over everything, you will not have a male deacon. You're not going to have any men who are going to be looking at this particular woman being baptized and you'll have other women deacons who are helping her. So that would be another function of things. We have in art evidence of certain clothing that bishops would wear or like a shepherd's crook, crozier that the bishops would use. In Christian art, we have evidence, not a lot, but enough of it's there to wonder if perhaps there were women who were serving communion. I'm part of an

initiative called the Visual Museum of Women in Christianity. Your listeners can Google that. And we show art of the church as it represents women, both biblical women and also women like the martyrs or like Seidora, the empress. And in some of our examples, we find a woman who has what looks like clothing that we'd find also on a bishop. But the evidence is not as clear as I would like, but I think it's there enough to stop us from just assuming that women were not active in the actual running of the church and also their decision, the decisions in the church. So I know female deacons, that's not disputed. The function of the deacons though, like deacons, weren't they distinguished between say bishops or presbyterous elders, whatever like overseers, like did deacons and female deacons occupy some kind of like teaching leadership

role in the church or is that fuzzy? Dr. Mary Farris Well, no, I think there's evidence especially. Yeah, there's evidence for that. Carolyn Osia co-authored, and I'm blanking on her co-author's name, a book, yeah, that she did pulling that evidence together. I would say that's probably the best. We could probably put that in the show notes. But that lays things out really, really well.

The sort of organized shirts that you have post-Constantine, you're going to find more writings at that point that will have like apostolic constitutions and kind of writing out all of that. Earlier on, in terms of the biblical text, my own sense is that the language there, episkopoi, diakonoi, presputoroi, those categories can include women as well as men. I think there's a plausible argument to be made that Yodia and Syntyche in Philippians 4 are actually Episcopoi. But having said all that, the structure of the church was not the kind of sharply hierarchical that I think you would see, let's say, in the Roman military. But I think in the imagination of the earliest Christian leaders who are all Jewish, they would have been thinking about the synagogue.

And the synagogue doesn't have, nor actually does Judaism as a whole, at least at that time, have a kind of hierarchical structure on things. At this point, you don't have the mass, the idea of priest, the way that it emerges in later centuries. So part of my hesitancy in answering things, your question is that I think we can imagine, I'm not saying you are, but we can imagine that what we see in the third century kind of develops from the foundation in the first century. And I think that there's also some disconnects as the church moves into becoming an illicit religion in the empire. I would say one other thing as well, and that is we can focus on an office as though we

assume that's where the power is. And sometimes that is what is the case, the decision-making power there. But we also know that other things give authority and give influence to people, often money. And so women in these times, certainly when you think of like Jerome, he was basically sponsored by a couple of very wealthy women in Rome and then Paula who moved to Bethlehem and started a couple of monasteries herself. And Jerome is a primary example, but I think that occurred throughout. And so we know that in Rome, some of Jerome's women friends were very influential in the

leading theological discussions that went on. So even though they weren't at the Council of Nicaea in a formal sense, they had engaged with many of those men present and I think their opinions then would have been influential, but just not at that council moment. So I think those are when we think about participation with women in the early church, we have to think more broadly, like we kind of do now anyway also. There are, you know, people in the church that don't hold a position, but by golly, the pastor runs everything by them because they just carry a lot of weight, their opinions. And oftentimes that's really good that they do. I don't mean to disparage that kind of authority. The final thing I want to say is that before Constantine,

the people who the church looked up to were martyrs. And in that case, you might have as many female martyrs as male martyrs. Really? And, oh yeah. So it's not just a few exceptions, it's a lot, okay? No, no. And some of the leading figures are women. Perpetua and Felicitas, with Perpetua's diary, she and Felicitas are sent, well, Perpetua

is the central character and Felicitas is the one we know the most about secondarily. And there are men who are also martyred and we know their names, but we don't really know their stories. Blandina in the martyr of Vian and Leon, she is a central figure, the central figure. She's a slave woman. So you have Polycarp as well, you have Ignatius, two bishops, very important, but their testimony is put right alongside the women martyrs. So I think that when you talk about what created the imagination of what it means to be a faithful disciple in the second century

and beyond? I mean, think of Thecla, the first female martyr, and then you have woman Macrina, whose secret name is Thecla. You know, Gregory in the life of Macrina and also his theological discussion on the soul engages with her. I mean, he thinks so highly of her. So you have Sekhla in the early second century, her story very influential for centuries beyond. As Protestants, we don't know the story very much, but there are still shrines to Thecla around the Orthodox and in the Catholic tradition.

Do we know what kind of role that these female martyrs had in the church before they were martyred? Do we know what officer, yeah, rolled the occupied or is that unknown? No. With Perpetua, she was a newer convert and was still in the process of her catechism before being baptized. And then once she was arrested, she was baptized. Blandina, no. Her owner, Blandina's owner recanted and then recanted her recanting. It was a terrible mess. But Blandina stood firm the whole time. I don't know how long she had been a believer at that point.

Fekla, the story is she's converted before she marries. She breaks off her engagement once she hears Paul. And she lives for a long time preaching in Southern Asia Minor and healing and teaching. She's known because Tertullian talks about her or she talks, Tertullian talks about a group that uses Thecla's example to have in this group a a woman baptized and Trutallian doesn't like that. Early on, you know, Trutallians right around 200, you have this story of fecla, very influential within the church. Yeah, but we don't, I don't know what they, yeah, we don't often know their backstory. Is it, I always heard, and I don't know where I got this from, that people would only martyr,

kill people of influence. Leaders, influential people, they would just pick some random congregant to martyr them. Is that accurate or I don't know where I heard that from. Does the fact that they are martyred show that they had some serious influence in the church enough to be a target of being martyred? No, I mean, maybe initially there was, and maybe in certain circumstances like polycarp, but I don't think as a rule, no, we have other groups of Mars. And I think of like Pliny the Younger's letter to Trajan where he's asking about how do I punish people who admitted that they had been Christians but aren't anymore?

Should I still punish them for the fact that they made such a stupid decision way back? He's going to kill those who are Christians like that. He figures that's okay. And he's not going to accept just anonymous tips. He's going to check stuff out. But to find out his information, he takes two ministers, is how he words it, who are female slaves. And he tortures them and questions them and he realizes, oh, this is just a pretty innocuous superstition. But there you have two slave women who are seen as leaders. At least that's what Pliny thinks they are, leaders in the church. So that kind of complicates things. They wouldn't have social complicates in answer to your question.

They wouldn't have had social status, but within the church they might've. And so, you know, brought forward. What do you say leaders in a church, but they're not occupying some kind of like office of Bishop or Presbyterian? Well, that would have been like Deacon. Okay, okay.

But it's just in the Latin, yeah. So Deacon, cause I know, you know, so the Greek word Diokinia, Diakinos, I mean, servant, but sometimes leader Paul calls himself a servant. He calls Jesus a servant. So it's a little blurry. Like, is it a servant, servant and not a leader or is it a servant leader kind of thing? Do you have in the early church when women are deacons, do you have the same kind of ambiguity? Like just because they're a deacon doesn't, it could mean they have a leadership role or not. It just kind of really depends or? Yeah. Yeah. Well, and so I'll go to Phoebe, who we know is a deacon in a particular church. So the church of Cancrea there on the Eastern port of Karn. And she's a particular church. So the church of Ken Kraya there in the eastern port of Karn.

And she's a benefactor. So this kind of gets to your point about wealth. And I don't know if the two of that, they don't need to be linked, but Paul says she helped him a lot. And so as a benefactor, now it may be that she didn't have a lot of money, but she had a lot of connections and so that she was able to help him with his traveling or get papyrus and stylus and ink cheap or something. I don't know. So that is someone who, she holds some sort of position in that church and it seems to be broad enough that she was influential in Paul's life and in other people's lives and he wants her to have that same kind of influence in Rome, which is why he's recommending her to them.

Many scholars, not all, but many scholars today would argue that she carried the letter of the Romans, right? And there's no proofs of that in the sense of we don't have a Bible verse that says, and by the way, Phoebe carried this. Well, we don't have that for anybody. I think if it was Robert, a deacon in the Church of Cancrea, we'd be less reluctant to imagine that Robert carried the letter and read the letter aloud to them. So I think there within the church, you know, through its 2,000 years, there was a

sexism that emerges, you know, I mean, it's just how it is. So, but if we can kind of erase that a little bit and just assume it's one believer being recommended, that's usually how a person carrying the letter would be presented. If that's the case, then she would have read the letter with Paul. You're familiar with this and maybe many of your listeners are too, that the ancient text wouldn't have had spaces between words even. And you look at that and trying to read that, I mean, it's performing,

right? Like the oral presentation of these letters took some practice. And so she probably did. And Lycotichikis or others probably talked with Paul about what it meant. So she may have been what we could call the first interpreter of Romans. But since it's an easy letter, I don't think it's not that hard. Right. Romans? Right. So, you know, so if that's the case, is she a leader in the church? I'd have to say yes. Like she's presenting the word of God. I don't know that she would have thought I'm reading scripture because I don't know if Paul would have thought

I'm writing scripture, right? I mean, he's writing. He's still carrying. Authoritatively. Yeah. But it's, you know, he's not going to use that language that we would use now. But yeah. And then if you have questions, you know, she can fill you in. So that to me would be a position of leadership because it is rightly handling the Word of God, which would be important for leadership. Yeah, but you know, the other thing that I think of a lot, you know, it's Jesus' words, the Gentiles lord it over each other when they think of leadership. He says, but it shouldn't be so among you.

When I think about the, there can be a lot of, I don't know, heat and not light around talking about Junia and Andronicus, especially Junia. Is it a woman or a man? Well, it's a woman, so it pretty much comes. But then is she among the apostles or known by the apostles? You know, that little preposition tripping us up. But what I want to emphasize is that she was in jail. She was in jail for her faith. So she's somehow noteworthy, like Paul and Andronika, she's in jail for preaching. So like to me, leadership is really, really serving. That's the model for leadership. And I'm saddened that at times, and I'm not saying you're doing this at all, but at times it feels to me like the conversation is about who gets to make the final decision on the

church budget. And that's an important decision to make, but the vision that Jesus has about leadership isn't captured by that kind of description of leadership, i.e., you know, I make a final decision on money or on what other people can do. I fully agree. This is one of the early in my journey in this conversation, one of the first things I studied was early church structure and authority and leadership. And it's just so different than our kind of hierarchical,

I mean, Jesus already turned that on its head and you see Paul, especially like 1 Corinthians 1-4 and other passages continuing that tradition of to be a leader is to be a, not a servant lead, like a big leader who's also kind of a servant, but like the servants are the leaders, you know, the whole thing is kind of flipped upside down. I think when we look to our modern day, typical church structure with, it's a little bit more hierarchical. I feel like we do. We, when we read that back into the text and then ask questions about women and leadership, I think we're just all jumbled up. To my mind, clearly you have women all across the New Testament and the old,

I would say more so in the new, occupying significant influential roles. Like there's a tremendous amount of agency invested in women, like that to me, that's not even, shouldn't be the debate. You still do have, even if you read it the most generously towards women, you still have the overwhelming majority of leadership offices, if you would even call it that, occupied by men.

Is that because, from a more egalitarian position, let's just say, how do you make sense of that? Why isn't it, you know, half women apostles, half male apostles? Why isn't Paul right? You know, first and second Timothy and Titus. And then, you know, first and second Tara or, you know, some female, you know, like, um, why do you still have the majority of leaders seeming to be men? Why is it the Episcopal or elder? I forget if this boss must be a husband of one wife, not a, and he knows how to say wife of one husband. He says in chapter five, but he doesn't say that to you. Is that because of the cultural context? Kind of like how Paul, like he said, he kind of reframed slavery,

but he didn't put a complete end to slavery. Like he didn't socially, he didn't challenge every aspect of the social kind of norms. He was sort of chipping away at it. If that's even the best metaphor, do you see what I get it out? Like I'm trying to make sense of there's still an imbalance there, you know, even from an egalitarian, even if you read, you know, junior apostle and Phoebe elite and everything, it's still, it's like, well, there's still, if you take kind of that reading of all the kind of Priscilla and Aquila, there's still a majority of men leading, but that's in a culture where that's was very much the norm. Yeah. Well, and most were Jews. And I think as the church became Gentile, you know, in

the second, later second century, predominantly Gentile, we forget that the Jewishness of the 12 apostles of Paul, of Timothy becomes very important in Timothy's adult experience with his circumcision and Titus is singled out as not. And that we lose sight of how important that is, but as you and I who are New Testament geeks know, that is actually a really important category and is a very important category in Paul's letters. So, let me just flag that what we find really important right now, the male-female, and it is very important, we forget about another really important category that exercised the first century church. And in the answer to that Jew-Gentile, what Peter received from the Lord is that God shows

no favoritism, right? So we have that in Acts 10 about Cornelius receiving the Holy Spirit, God shows no favoritism. In James, as he chastises the church for being really generous with the wealthy and forgetting the poor, God shows no favoritism. And with Paul, he says to the owners, God shows no favoritism. And the reason I'm bringing that up is you were talking about how, in a sense, Paul is chipping away at the social conditions. And I think when he says God shows no favoritism, so you may not threaten your slaves, he completely undercuts how the institution of slavery works.

It is by domination. It is, it's by domination. And so, when you're not allowed to threaten, then, you know, your power is gone. And when you hear that the Lord God Almighty, when you and your slave arrive before Jesus, there will be no favoritism. I would hope those owners kind of were a bit, they took stock. And these owners can be men and women.

It's not like you only had male owners. So with all of that said, yes, it is the case when you count up that there were a lot of men doing things. But you know, that was true of the culture. Women weren't educated women to the same extent. They were in some regards, minors in the court. Their ability to walk around freely and stay overnight at a friend's, so to speak, quite curtailed. And let me just add, that's the case even now. Women fear their bodily integrity all the time. In fact, a student of mine about a year ago cited, I don't know, some survey.

And one of the top three things that women believers are most excited about in the new heavens and the new earth is they can walk at night without fear. Now, I don't know if they'll actually be night, but they will not fear their surroundings. And that's today. So back in the ancient world, I mean, just as what it is, right? No police force. So all that to say, that's the reality that Paul had to write to. And so, I think we have these God shows no favoritism, to the Corinthians, Paul will say, husbands, you do not have authority over your own body, but your wife does in chapter seven, verse four. That's revolutionary. And how does, it's that little kernel I would say that Paul plants in the ground that has grown up to now in the West, you know, I have a doctorate, an earned doctorate and can teach just like you.

But we were over in Oxford, our class last month and studying Dorothy Sayers. And when she went to Oxford, she did all the classes, but she didn't get the degree. I know, I think it's in maybe in Cambridge. One of the schools did not admit students, female students to like 1980. I just read that recently. Is that wild?

Crazy. That is so wild. female students to like 1980. I just read that recently. Is that wild? That's crazy. That is so wild. So I think, all right, yeah, you have Priscilla who teaches Apollo's, you have Junia who is preaching loud enough that she gets thrown in jail. You have Iodi and Syntyche who are leading the church in some way. And it's remarkable enough that Paul wants them to solve whatever, I think, ministry issue is going on. I mean, you have women to say nothing of the women in the gospels like Mary Magdalene presenting

the gospel first. But in some of the ancient artwork, you have Mary, the mother of Jesus, who was present at Pentecost, and she's at the center of these pictures. How many times, I mean, I've never heard anybody preach about the fact that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was there at the birth of the church. But when you see some of these images in the early church and on through like the early, you the early post-Constantine church, buries the center. Yeah. So some of it is we just kind of lack the imagination that women were actually way more a part of things. We just don't think about it. Then I know that just the 12 male apostles, yes, but they were of course all Jewish and they

needed to be 12 because Jesus is reestablishing the people of God, if you will, the 12 tribes of Israel. 12 is a really, really important number and these men represent the ancient promises. So I can't imagine choosing a woman and I can't imagine choosing a Gentile. So that, that's how I would quickly answer. Yeah. The, um, your statement about, sorry, I just couldn't get off what you said. When a woman thinks about the becoming a Christian, the thought of in the new creation, being able to not be, to be able to just go out freely and not have your body integrity violated.

We were in your old hometown of Kijabi, Kenya. And I would go out and go on runs and you know exactly the run I'm talking about from Cure up to the bridge where the railroad tracks go over. It's all uphill. Anyway, it's a great way to get to the top of the mountain. And I think it's a great way to get to the top of the mountain. And I think it's a great way to get to the top of the mountain. And I think it's a great way to get to the top of the mountain. And I think it's a great way to get to the top of the mountain.

And I think it's a great way to get to the top of the mountain. And I think it's a great way to get to the top of the mountain. And I think it's a great way to get to the top of the mountain. And I think it's a great way to get to the top of the mountain. And I think it's a great way to get to the top of the mountain. And I think it's a great way to get to the top of the mountain. And I think it's a great way to get to the top of the mountain. And I think it's a great way to get to the top of the mountain. who are teenagers and three other college girls, my wife and my son and all the other girls as with like to run, but I would get out. Didn't even think about it. I know I'm awkward. I'm the Muslim goo going on a run and my shorts or whatever. And I get in looks,

whatever, but whatever. But they're like, Oh wait, but I can't wear this and I can't wear that. And Oh wait, women don't jog in this culture. Like it's just not a thing. Like to see a guy jogging, especially in Missing. That's a little strange, you know, but it's, you know, you put on your shorts, whatever go, but like, I'm like, well, wait a minute. Okay. You can't wear your, you can't wear something. Can't wear yoga pants. Can't wear shorts. Can't wear. And then every guy's going to be looking at you because they're not used to seeing a girl, especially Missing a girl. And you can't, you know what? Forget it. I don't like, that's just, I want to do that, you know?

And that's only your only time not being stared at. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And that was good. Going with me. I'm like, well, I'll be there. The thought of them waking up at five in the morning because they're jet lagging, you know, and going on a jog. Like I would never know a way. My, my girls don't do that. They're like, I would love to go out and run, but the sun's going down. And I'm like, I've never, I never have even thought about that. I can go out and run at midnight if I wanted to. I wouldn't even think about it. Yep. Yep. Anyway, and women do all the time. Yep. So that's something to when people say, well, why weren't there more women in more visual roles in the New Testament? I think that's just endemic of the culture at the

time as well. But we see the gospel spotlighting some women who are doing it, and that's really important to continue to emphasize. So do you think that the, like, uh, just go ahead and more like an egalitarian commentary and just going back to that debate, like almost seeing like a trajectory sort of initiated. I mean, it goes all the way back to that. I mean, it's just Genesis one 27, right? But I mean, it's, it's w you don't need to have kind of 50, 50 men, you know, women lead in the same position because of the cultural context. But if you see some women who are in the same position, it's, it's, you don't need to have kind of 50, 50 men, you know, women lead in the same position because of the cultural context. But if you see some kind of movement toward that, that's significant.

I think that's one of the more powerful hermeneutical arguments in favor of a more egalitarian position rather than trying to find every single woman of significance that she needs to be a leader. She needs to be teaching leader. She needs to be teaching and preaching or whatever. If she is, she is, but like some of them, I think are, are pressed a little too much exegetically. Um, I guess my, on that, my, my secondary question is if we do see the new Testament establishing that kind of trajectory, why do we seem to see it or do we see that trajectory continued on to the early church or do we seem to see it? Or do we see that trajectory continued on in the early church? Or do we see it kind of pulled back a little bit? Like if, if 1st Timothy 3 very much opens

a door for female elders, or at least it doesn't shut it, then why don't we see female elders in the early church? Is it just that they were blinded by their kind of more misogyny or? I think a big thing was the development of the mass and the theology around the mass and the male priest representing Christ's maleness in a very specific way. So that's one thing to think about. Protestants don't have... Yeah, so that's something to consider. But the other thing is you still had very influential empresses like Polcaria very involved in theological discussion. You have abbesses like, so female abbots and

Bridget in Ireland would be one key example, but you have that even at the time of Luther when the monasteries were shutting down, there were female, there were nunneries or female monasteries that remained. And even with the blessing of Melanchson who in conversation with an abbess, and this is in Miriam Taylor's new book that looks at women through the Christian women through history. Women's stories we just don't know. So there's a lot of women who were involved in like French Bible, Jennifer McNutt does a lot with the Huguenots and also with the reformers like Calvin and the French Bible and that, to say nothing of the English Reformation. So, women have been doing this. We just haven't heard their stories because we preserve what the men talk about and they just didn't preserve it.

So, do you think that in as much as there is this trajectory in the New Testament, preserve it. So do you think that in as much as there is this trajectory in the New Testament where leadership positions are opened up to women, that you're saying it actually is continued, even though culture doesn't get any less misogynistic, you still see that trajectory continuing in more and more women occupying positions? Yes, I think so. As more and more women are educated and have resources, that'd be true for men as well. Men are in the Western world as a percentage more educated now than they

were even 100 years ago in terms of public education and all of that. I think the other thing that I would emphasize is the role of philosophy, especially Aristotelian thought, in rereading and I think misreading Genesis 1 and 2. I think Aristotle's views on not just that men and women are different, but that there is an ontological inferiority with women has really bled into the church and such that for some defining masculinity, or what it means to be a man, is of utmost importance. And to do that, they decide, well, I'm not female and then, okay, what does it mean to be female? And then it's things that are less than. So well, then what I can do as a man. And there's a new book out by Sister Prudence Allen, A-L-L-E-N.

She did a three volume work on philosophy about women, but she put a new one out, which is like a summary of her three volumes. It's with Erdmans, just came out. It's called The Concept of Woman. And it is so helpful. It just traces from a philosophical standpoint, like where we get somewhat with Plato, but a lot with Aristotle and then just following his ideas all the way down in key categories. And she's humorous, which you don't necessarily think a philosopher ever would be, but it's a witty book. She's a really good author. And I recommend it for everybody, have it on your shelf because it highlights, I think just so much of the conversation we have about the differences between men

and women are filtered through an Aristotelian grid. And so, when people talk about, well, we need order, yeah, I know God is a God of order. Then when you start talking about orders, it relates to men and women. And I feel like at that point, the jobs or the responsibilities that men are given have more responsibility for the group as a whole and women have less. Well, that's not just different. That's hierarchical. That's where I would say if we're talking about egalitarian, complementarian, and those words of course, as you very well know, often lose their meaning.

They're used in such different ways now. But I think that's what I would say in terms of, broadly speaking, my position is that, yes, women and men are different. You, as a man, are, you know, able to take that chainsaw out and cut up the tree that the hurricane blew over. Me, I'm really good at digging up some of the smaller bushes that are overgrown in our garden. In both cases, the garden looks nice. It's not better or worse one thing or another.

It's just what it is. We're all fixing things. It's when you tell me, Lynn, you can only pick up the shovel to dig up the bush. I get to have the chainsaw because I'm a man. Then I think, oh, wait, time out. And I think that's the, I don't mind differences, but I don't like them hierarchically arranged.

My wife can wield the chainsaw too. Oh, I know, I met her, absolutely. It's funny, we have a rental property that we sort of flipped, we bought it and it was just in terrible shape. And my wife did 90% of the work. And I'm not talking, I mean, we subbed out some stuff, the drywall or whatever, but she bought a industrial painter, a painted the entire house.

She laid all the hardwood floors. She went into Lois and bought all her own tools. And I mean, it was like, it was incredible. Yeah. Uh, yeah. And I would have so much fun doing that. Oh, she was power tools. Oh my gosh. So fun. Yeah.

Thanks so much for the conversation. I'm just going to buy this book right now. I just, uh, yeah. So I think you'll really like it. Let me know. Yeah. It's really, yeah. Like I said, it's also really well written because I'm more of an historian than a philosopher in terms of what I like to read. But I think she just lays things out so clearly and helpfully. I think it's just so important for the Church to hear the gospel, which from Jesus' own lips critiques the power structures that dominate this fallen world. Yeah, this looks fascinating.

I'm glad to have it in one volume too, so I don't have to read all three volumes. I know, I know. Yeah, yeah, it's actually with you on that one. Well, thanks so much, Lynn, for being part of Theology of the Art again. Where can people find you and your work? You got a website?

Yeah, I do. Um, I had, they can just Google my name, Lynn Koik, and I do have a website there, but I'd also encourage them to go to the center for women and leadership, um, which they can, um, they type in leadership without apology. I think that gets them to the center for women in leadership and there they can check out the visual museum that I was talking about. I also have a podcast, the Alabaster Jar. They can check out that. And yeah, yeah, they can find me that way and love to talk with people. Awesome.

Thanks for what you do, Lynn. Really appreciate you and your scholarship. Thank you so much, Preston. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.