Can women be pastors? This question continues to divide Christian communities, with faithful believers reaching different conclusions based on their interpretation of Scripture. In this episode, we welcome Bridget Jack Jeffries, a PhD candidate at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, to explore both complementarian and egalitarian perspectives on women's ordination. We examine key biblical passages including 1 Timothy 2:12, which seems to restrict women's teaching authority, alongside compelling examples of female leaders like Deborah, Miriam, Anna, and the apostle Junia mentioned in Romans 16:7.

The conversation reveals how Christians who deeply love Scripture can interpret the same passages differently when asking "can women be pastors." From examining house church leaders in the New Testament to understanding how different denominations approach women's ordination, this episode provides a charitable exploration of both sides. Whether you're from an evangelical, Lutheran, Catholic, or other Christian tradition, you'll gain insight into the biblical, historical, and theological factors that inform this ongoing discussion about women in ministry and church leadership.

Mentioned in this episode:

Stepping Up to Supervision

Hello and welcome to the Enter the Bible podcast where you can get answers or at least reflections on everything you wanted to know about the Bible but were afraid to ask. I'm Kathryn Schifferdecker

Katie Langston. And today on the podcast, we are delighted to welcome a very special guest, an old dear friend of mine, Bridget Jack Jeffries. She is a PhD candidate at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School with a dissertation on Romans 16 verse 7, in particular, the mention of Junia as chief among the apostles, right? That's that text. And she's a church historian and blogs at Weighted Glory.

and has been a friend of mine for almost 20 years now we were figuring out. So, long time, but welcome. So glad to have you with us.

Thanks, Katie. Thanks, Kathryn It's nice to meet you.

Yeah, good to meet you and thanks for joining us, Bridget.

So, we have a listener submitted question that we are considering today. Of course, dear listener, if you would like to submit a question, you may do so at enterthebible.org. There's a little button up at the top where you can click ask a question and a form comes up and we try to get to as many of these as we can. And the question that we have today is one that's come up a few times, but it's can women be pastors? And Bridget, in particular, I know that

coming, it's one thing, Kathryn and I are both ordained in the mainline tradition, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, to be specific, the ELCA. And the question of can women be pastors has been resolved for, I don't know, 50-ish years now?

Yeah, 1970, so 55 years, yeah.

for a while. But I know that this is ⁓ still a live question in some corners of the evangelical church, and I'm assuming that that's sort of the context where this question was coming from. So I thought, gosh, we should have Bridget on. And I know you've done a lot of thinking and writing about this question, maybe coming from that perspective that could be a little, that could be helpful to our listeners. So let's dive in. Can women be pastors or is it a sin?

mean, this question might be a little unfair given the current crowd, because I think we all belong to denominations that ordain women. Yeah. So I think that we all, in our personal lives, as far as we're concerned, we tend to answer this question, yes. But I'd like to try to answer it fairly for the people who say no and explain what their perspective would be.

try to explain it fairly why they would say no, because the position in evangelicalism that women can't be pastors, it's been called different things over church history. But today it's called complementarianism, or they tend to self-identify as what's called complementarianism. And my advisor is complementarian. Trinity Evangelical Divinity School is technically a complementarian seminary. It has quite a few faculty. In the evangelical world, guess I should say.

When you believe women can be pastors, you usually identify as egalitarian, is what it's called. And if you don't think women can be pastors, you're usually self-identifying as complementarian. So my seminary is technically complementarian, has egalitarian faculty, technically complementarian. My advisor is complementarian. The program director of my PhD program is complementarian. So at least two of my four dissertation committee members are complementarian. I have many friends who are.

So I'm trying to answer this question fairly for them on why they would say no. And when we discuss the egalitarian versus complementarian debate, really what we're looking at is two different sets of Bible passages that on the surface could be viewed as contradicting each other. But let me say what the complementarians see, and then we can move on to how I would actually answer the question. What the complementarians would say is that 1 Timothy 2, 12

Sure, that'd be great.

⁓ forbids women from teaching in at least some capacity and exercising authority. So at a minimum, this is so difficult to explain because there's different flavors of complementarian, but at a minimum, a complementarian is going to say that there has to be male oversight or eldership of some kind. And you really see different applications of this in the evangelical world.

There's some churches that are sometimes derisively called semi-galitarian, where the senior pastor is male and the elders are male, but almost anything else can be a woman. You know, I'm evangelical and I was dating a complementarian guy when I was single. yeah, I don't know. I remember he decided female deacons was a hill he wanted to die on. Like I had asked him after we'd been dating for a while, I was like, well, where would you and I go to church if...

we got married, you know, could we compromise and at least go to a church with female deacons? And he decided female deacons was a hill worth dying on. He's like, I'm not going to compromise on God's standards. And I don't want to go into details. I like compromise on God's standards in many other ways in his life. But female deacons was the hill that he was ready to die on, you know?

You

There's so many different flavors of complimentarian. I remember one of my first professors at TEDs made some comments on a paper that kind of outed him as complimentarian. And I stormed into his office, I sat down, I was like, so how complimentarian are you? And he's like, he kind of blinks slowly and he's like, I'm complimentarian. And I'm like, are you Paige Patterson or Craig Blomberg? He's like, I don't know what that means. ⁓

I was just trying to get like, I don't know, was trying to get an idea of what I'm dealing with. Cause there's people like my ex boyfriend who they're not going to negotiate on anything in regards to women's leadership. They think that women should be at home with the children, not have jobs, not be police officers, not be presidents.

And then there's people who think women could be just about anything except senior pastor. I've never met a complementarian who thinks a woman can be a senior pastor or an elder. think once you've crossed that Rubicon, you're egalitarian. But anyways, so that's what the complementarians would say though, is that first Timothy 2.12 prohibits women from teaching or holding authority in at least some capacity and that this is permanent. That Paul or whoever wrote

First Timothy, they're usually pretty conservative in their views on scripture. anyway, Paul here in First Timothy, he roots it in creation. So it's permanent and it can't be changed from generation to generation. And they would point out that for most of the Bible, yeah, we see some female leaders, but generally it's male leadership. They might point out that.

Jesus appointed the 12, they were all male. They might point out that whenever we see elders, they're always male. So, you know, it just depends on your flavor of complimentarian, how savvy he is with what the data says. They'll often point out that most of scripture seems to have been written by male or they'll assert that all scripture was written by a man. So that's what they see, I think. And how they apply that, there's just so many different applications for how they apply that.

But that's generally, they just think for whatever reason God wants male oversight, male leadership. And I hope I'm being fair to them and to where they're coming at when they're looking at scripture. Like I said, that's not my position, but I think that's what they see.

That's really helpful, Bridget. And I'll just add something that we all know that it's not just evangelicals, right? That the Catholic Church being the biggest example, right? The Catholic does not ordain women as pre-eminent.

The orthodox, the Mormons, the-

And I grew up in a branch of Lutheranism, the Lutheran Church Missouri centered that doesn't ordain women too. So this is a broad swath of Christianity. I mean, really, obviously the majority really, if you count, as we should, the Orthodox and the Catholics. But I think you're

Yeah, your point that it's based on a particular interpretation of particular texts in the New Testament is really the basis, I think, for all of these groups for not ordaining women. So that's a helpful summary.

think I would add just from my own understanding, I think it is a little more nuanced for say, Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, it has to do with their understanding of sacramental theology, where the priest is actually standing in the person of Christ and Christ was a male. I've read some really interesting, know, dialogues and debates along those lines and we won't digress into that, you know, into those theological questions because that's the question says pastors, which sounds

pretty Protestant to me, doesn't say priests. So I think that's the context that this question is coming from. And Bridget, what I heard you say is that really it's 1 Timothy 2 in particular that seems to be the one. And I'll just read that from the NIV, that verse says, do not permit a woman to teach or have authority over a man, she must be silent. And some, sounds like take that to mean in even the secular sphere. I think one time

Kathryn, we had a question on here that was like, could a woman be a CEO? We probably, we can put that link in the show notes, but it was probably also sort of an exegetical kind of conclusion or question coming out of that same passage.

Um, if you read, can't remember who it was, it was Wayne Grudem or John Piper, but they're significant leaders in the evangelical complementarian movement. And one of them even has a, he had a little spiel about like, if you're a woman and a man wanders onto your property and asks for directions, how you needed to answer him without like you were an authority over him. I'm like, you gotta be kidding me. If a guy wanders onto my property, I am an authority over him. Okay.

Biden or if, ⁓ did they figure out somewhere around their theology to vote for Palin and McCain anyways? Or did they say no, a woman can't be vice president, so I've got to vote Democrat this time. don't know.

It's just a diversion. I'd like to know how their theology worked with that. Anyways, that's pretty extreme. I don't think most complementarians are like that. I think most of them are a lot more casual about it, but if you go to their churches, you will probably not see women as pastors or elders and maybe not deacons. just, that one really, your mileage will vary.

My answer to the question is obviously yes. And you guys are Lutheran, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. I'm Evangelical Covenant Church, which used to be the Swedish Lutheran Church in America. So I guess I'm, diet Lutheran. I have some Lutheran affinities at least, but yeah. I don't remember when they started ordaining women. I want to say it was in the nineties, but the reason why, I mean, I'm somebody who once upon a time, this question really troubled me. And for a brief period of my life, I'd even say I was.

complimentarian or at least I accepted most of the complimentarian arguments. And what changed for me as I was looking through scripture and as I was trying to study this was, I mean, a big passage for me was Judges 4, because there's clearly a woman in authority there. So how do we reconcile that? Like we have this passage in 1 Timothy 2, 12 that says women can't hold authority. And then we have this example in Judges 4 where a woman is clearly holding authority. And there's different ways that...

And

that's just for our listeners who may not have that memorized. Judges four is the story of Deborah. And she's a judge in Israel. she? Okay.

to have the judge.

And

she commands Sisera, the leader of armies.

Yes. And it's difficult for me to read Judges 4 and say Deborah wasn't an authority. the Complementarians have different explanations for it. But in general, what you see is that the Complementarians think that passages like 1 Timothy 2, 12 are binding and apply in most situations and that that's the standard. And an egalitarian like me thinks the women leaders that we see in the Bible, that that's

the standard and that these other passages like 1 Timothy 2 12 have to be some kind of exception. I guess that we disagree where the exceptions are and where the standards are. Right. In making the case for women's leadership, I would point to Deborah, I would point to Miriam who was, she's leading Israel and one of, I think it's Excess 20 or 22.

And then later in Micah, it says, I think Micah 6, 8 or 8, 6, it says, I sent Moses to lead you also Aaron and Miriam. So God reaffirms that Miriam is a leader over Israel and part of his love for Israel was a woman's leadership. I would point out that the first Christ evangelist in the New Testament is the prophet Anna sitting in Luke 2.

Ana is, it says that she spoke of the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem. I remember I asked my complimentarian ex-boyfriend, he said, women are not called to public preaching. And I said, okay, what about Ana? And he read the passage and he just kind of blinked and said, women are not called to public preaching.

Ha ha!

He sounds like a peach you may have dodged a bullet there.

But I'm like, what is this woman doing preaching in my Bible though? Like, I'm very clear here. There's a woman preaching and it's a public place. It's a holy place. It seems to be a mixed gender crowd. Nobody reprimands her. Nobody tells her that this is wrong. We see Huldah teaching. see Priscilla, some people say that this was private teaching, but we see Priscilla co-teaching with her husband Aquila Apollos.

Jerome actually says at one point, Jerome the church father actually says, he says, Apollos was an apostolic man and he had no problem with a woman teaching him. So why is it a bad thing if I teach women? He was defending him taking on female students and he's not even arguing for women's leadership in teaching. He's just arguing that it's okay for him to teach women. And he points out, look, Priscilla taught Apollos and he's an apostolic man and he didn't mind. So it's interesting. As far as female pastors, like this

I think people come along sometime and they're like, you know, show me where there is a female pastor in the Bible. Show me female pastors in the Bible. I guess the first thing I would point out is that we don't see a lot of pastors in the New Testament to begin with. Paul actually only uses the word poymen to mean like an ecclesiastical leader of some kind once in Ephesians 411. Do you need to read that one, Katie? Ephesians 411? ⁓ Apostles, prophets, I think, evangelists.

Sure, yeah, let's- let's re-

⁓ Ephesians 411, the gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.

There you go. That's technically the only place in the New Testament where pastors are mentioned. We do have overseers or elders, episkopos, I think is the word mentioned in 1 Timothy 3, but we don't see a real distinction between like elders and bishops or pastors in these early texts of the New Testament.

Right.

What we see is we see people called ministers and both men and women are called this, deacon or minister. And we see people called like coworkers or Paul. And then we see people who are house church leaders. And again, both men and women are house church leaders. We have, I had a list here. have a Afia, we have Priscilla. We don't know if Nympha or Nympha is male or female, but we might have Nympha. Generally thought it's probably a woman, but we might have Nympha.

We have Chloe, I think it said John Mark's mother. There's different women who are mentioned though in connection with leading a house church. I think, and when we look at church history, when people looked at male house church leaders, like one of the reformers, Hugo Grotia, when he looked at Nympha

and he thought Nympha was a man. He basically speaks of him as a pastor and as somebody who saw to the spiritual care and feeding of his household. And he says basically it's foul that somebody changed Ambrosia Astor's words to make him a woman, you know? He had no problem saying that house church leaders were pastors.

Ha ha ha ha

right? But then when it's women, it's like, they were just like running a house church, but that's nothing official. John Chrysostom also makes a really interesting comment about Yodia and Sentaishi in Philippians 4. At the beginning of Philippians 4, Paul says, I plead with you, Yodia, and I plead with you, Sentaishi, to be of one mind in the Lord. And John Chrysostom says, it appears to me these women were the capillion of the church at Philippi. Cappillion would mean chief or principal. It suggests that they were.

leaders of some kind at the church at Philippi. The other place where I think we see, well, two more places where I think we see female pastors of sorts in the Bible. One is in Revelation. It's kind of a bad female pastor. John speaks of the woman Jezebel and how Jesus is going to smite her children. I don't think that's a literal children. I think that's a female leader, that woman Jezebel who calls herself a prophet and I will smite her and her children. I don't think children means...

the people she birthed, think that's her disciples. So I think we see kind of a bad female pastor there. The other place where I think we see a female pastor

is in 2 John. I think the whole letter is written. think the elect lady, modern Bible scholarship has kind of had this conceit that the elect lady must be a metaphor for a church. I'm saying why. Some of the church fathers said it was an individual woman, and I don't see why it couldn't be a female house church leader or a pastor of some sort whom John writes to. So our understanding of pastor, think we see, I think the rules that were associated with pastor, we see women exercising the Bible. Now later on in church history, you know, it got

to bishop pretty fast, like this monarchical model where a congregation is led by a bishop and the bishop's kind of in charge. And by then, we're not really seeing a lot of women doing that, maybe among the Montanists. And when we get to Ignatius, he begs the churches to move over to the monarchical bishop model.

But as far as most of the writings of the New Testament, other than a couple of exceptions, we don't really see a lot of talk of pastors. It's mostly like local laypeople or house church leaders that are running congregations. And we definitely see women doing that. And those are some of reasons why one can be a pastor.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's awesome. was going to just say, and certainly ⁓ the sort of, I like how you said, you know, lay people sort of running congregations and things like that. I mean, it's like, they didn't have seminaries. That's a much later development. didn't have...

Gentiles

at least. might've had Jewish seminaries, but yeah, the church had split. ⁓

right, right, right, right. The church had split off from Judaism. it's really a, you know, some of these, it is like sort of how you frame it that sometimes, you know, unless they're asking the question about women leadership, you know, that they don't have any problems saying this is a pastor or a pastoral role or a leadership role or whatever. But then as soon as that, you know, that question gets raised, then all of a sudden, you know, there's some special pleading, I guess, that has to come in.

Now, obviously, as an ordained woman, I definitely think women can be pastors, so I'm biased. But one thing I heard you say that I think is really interesting is that it really comes down to interpretation and saying which, because there is contradictory evidence in the text. so then the question is, which do you privilege as more universal and which do you privilege as conditional or culturally bound or circumstantial? hopefully you don't...

you don't start with the conclusion, but we do. And part of it is, at least for me, it's like, I felt a call. And that for a lot of generations has been a big piece of discerning who is a pastor. Is the call, is the Holy Spirit just lying to a bunch of women, like godly women? I don't know. That would be

people do.

Right.

That would be some of my thoughts. Kathryn, yeah, go ahead.

Yeah, just to add to that, yes, we, Katie and I, are ordained Lutheran women, and so I suppose a listener who disagrees with us could just dismiss us because of that. I do, I think there are other, well, I'll just put it this way. I think that faithful people can disagree on this question and still be faithful, right? And a lot of it has to do with your interpretation of scripture and which passages you privilege. for me, I think

Bridget you mentioned so many examples there, including Holda, know, the prophetess in Second Kings, who advised King Josiah, right, this really important king in Judah. I would add passages like Galatians 3 that is really, was very important to me as I was discerning whether or not it was okay to be called into ministry. many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ, there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free.

there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then your Abraham's offspring eros according to the promise." So I remember when I, just a small anecdote, when I was probably about 12 years old, I was sitting in my home congregation and I loved and still love my home congregation. It's a conservative church and they hold the Bible very highly and they teach Bible in just a beautiful way.

But I was sitting in the balcony where my dad was the organist, sitting with my mom and watching the pastors come out in front of the altar. And I had turned to my mom without thinking and said, if I were a man, I would be a pastor. And she was like, you know, oh, and you would have been a good one or something like that. But it just had never occurred to me that that.

was an odd thing to say, or that that was even a possibility, right? It really wasn't until I left for college that I saw women pastors and thought, maybe, you know, maybe I could do that. But when I left for college and I went to an ELCA college, I remember saying to my dad, who I was fairly conservative, you know, I said, don't worry, I won't be a pastor. I won't, won't whatever. And he said, I've never thought that women couldn't be pastors. And that again was like an aha moment, like, ⁓

Well, if dad thinks it's okay, then maybe. So it was a kind of gradual process for me, but that passage in Galatians was really important in my own discernment. So, you know, do you hold Timothy in Galatians? Because there are some, there is some contradictory evidence there. And again, people can interpret these various passages in different ways and we can respect each other's interpretation, even if we don't agree and still say,

Yes, you're my brother or sister in Christ. Yes, you're a believer. And I guess we'll find out in the next life which one of us was right. it doesn't have to be the basis of animosity, I think. But I think respect is important and understanding of where the other is coming from.

And I would add too, like, I think sometimes, and I think it's with good, you know, with, I think it's a fair critique that sometimes among traditions that do ordain women, there is a, there can be culturally or even, you know, officially within those traditions.

sort of a disregarding of the biblical text. You know what I'm, like in the more quote unquote liberal side, it can be like, well, I just throw out any passage that I don't like. And we've talked a lot about this, you know, as

Kathryn and I both have a very high view of scripture and don't think that you can just throw out parts of the Bible that you don't like. It's not true that sometimes it's people who are just wishy-washy and sort of laissez-faire whatever about the Bible. Yeah, that definitely does exist. But you can have deeply faithful people who love the Bible and read it and cherish it and have a high view of the scripture and are trying to be

deeply faithful to the text of the scripture still come up with different answers on this question. I think it's important to name that.

I used to be ready to fight about this all the time, I've mellowed with age and I've recognized that we're all kind of just struggling to figure out. Like I said, I don't mean the Bible contradicts, I guess we'll discuss that in another episode. I don't mean it contradicts per se, but it's kind of contradictory evidence that we have these passages that very strongly seem to condemn women's leadership and then we have very good examples of women being leaders. So I think we're all just a little bit confused here.

by, you know, how to put those two pieces of data together. So I've grown to have more compassion for people who have put it together differently than I have. And I've said, I want to, I want to be supportive of women. want to be supportive of women's gifts, but I just can't say women can be elders and pastors or whatever. I'm more sympathetic to that. I don't think I'd want to go to church there, but I'm sympathetic to that. I hope a personal story is okay again.

Right, right, right, right.

Please. Katie performed my wedding to my husband and the guy that I met and married after I broke up with my complimentarian ex-boyfriend. That other guy. That other guy. But he was actually complimentarian also when we started dating. He was actually a refugee of Mark Driscoll's church of all places. we did have many conversations about how we would make a marriage work. you know, first Timothy two said, you know, we were just open to that dialogue about how to make things work.

That's

Well.

I think he technically identifies as egalitarian now. I also think if I died and he remarried to a complementarian, he'd switch teams again. But yeah, I know a lot of really good complementarians are people who don't believe in the ordination of women and I've mellowed out with age and I understand where they're coming from. I think the other thing that's worth pointing out is that that was the historic position for one reason or another that women generally weren't ordained.

highly controlled movement pushing for women's ordination. And I think the people who take the more traditional stance are like, well, this was the church's position through history. And those of us who are egalitarian are like, well, that position was fueled in part by misogyny. And now that we've gotten rid of the misogyny, we see it wasn't simply scripture that controlled that position. you know, I think we're all just trying to navigate a difficult issue here. And I understand when people come down on the other side from me, but...

That's kind of why I think women can be pastors. yeah, my favorite comic about this though is by Naked Pastor and it's like a flow chart diagram. And it says at the top, women be, can a woman be a pastor? the first question is, do you plan to pastor with your genitals? And if you say yes, it says you should not be a pastor.

Amen, amen.

You

say, no, it says, it says you can be a pastor. That's a sarcastic way of answering it, but I think there's at least a little bit of truth to that. And that I think we've seen women who have been really, really good pastors. And it's hard for me to explain that away and say, well, they shouldn't have been, God just didn't want them to be.

Ha ha!

I know that you've written on the matter of Junia and the New Testament. Did you want to mention that as well or is that more pertinent to our other ⁓ episode?

I can bring that up. So I am writing what's called a reception history of Junia. I'm looking at the history of biblical interpretation of Junia. There's a little bit of New Testament data in my dissertation though, because I feel like you can't really comment on what people have said about her without discussing what the ancient evidence says about her. So was Junia a man's name or a woman's name? Does that construction there, there's a debate over whether or not that construction can be read to say she was an apostle or she was well known to the apostle.

what does the data there say? But what I generally do is I go through history and I look at how people interpreted the passage. And one of the things I'm curious about...

Sorry, could you just remind us where the, she's mentioned?

Yeah.

So Romans 16, 7, what it says is, this is in the part of Romans, at the end of Romans, Paul is greeting kind of this list of people associated with the church in Rome. It's kind of, you know, it's a good thing to get a shout out from Paul. And I think there's a list of like 20 something people that are mentioned, either sending greetings or receiving them from Paul. So in Romans 16, 7, he says,

greet Andronicus and Junia, my relatives. What he literally says is, greet Andronicus and Junia, my, well, it's like fellow Jews. He's basically saying my fellow Jews. They are outstanding. And my fellow Jews and my co-captives is what he says. My fellow Jews, my co-captives. They are outstanding among the apostles and they were in Christ before I was. And this has become a very controversial passage because Junia would have

appear to be a woman's name. It's attested hundreds of times as a woman's name. And honestly, I think it may only be attested once as a man's name, really. And I haven't seen it in the literature outside of what I found. And it's not early, it's like fifth century. anyway, it's really well known as a woman's name. It's not well known as a man's name. And he seems to be saying this man and this woman, Andronicus and Junia, probably a husband and wife, but they could be brother and sister or some other familial relation, but...

He's saying that they were great, not just apostles, but great apostles, outstanding apostles. And there's been different debates, like some people have said, well, maybe he just means evangelists. Maybe he just means they were well-known to the apostles. Different things have been suggested about the passage, but one of the things I'm doing is kind of going through history and looking at what people said about the passage. And it's a bit of a...

proxy when I can't get data about Junia, I look at other texts dealing with female apostolicity. So for example, you guys are probably familiar with Acts of Paul and Thecla from the second century and no, not familiar with it? it's a wild text. It's basically a text about a female apostle whom Paul converts and she goes on a missionary journey with Paul and then she's

heard of it.

thrown to lions and are thrown to wild animals and there's miracles and she actually she's called the first martyr but she actually didn't die at the end of it anyway though.

So it's not accepted as canonical scripture, it comes from what? Second century.

Well, some places did accept it as canonical scripture, or at least, yeah, some places were reading it as scripture, at least by the fourth and fifth centuries. But it's basically a text about a female apostle. But it's interesting because Tertullian complained about it, and he said it was getting women to evangelize and baptize. So, you know, that goes into my dissertation as a place where female apostolicity seemed to have been interpreted to expand women's roles a bit. ⁓

There's a reformer, guess she'd be Lutheran, Lutheran-ish, Katharina Schütz Zell. Are you familiar with her? Uh-uh. She's a reformer, and at one point her husband, who was older than her, he passed away. She goes to his grave, she's talking, and she says, look, Mary Magdalene was an apostle and she brought the gospel to the men, so I'm going to preach to you now. These are kind of places that I'm tracking where women read female apostolicity.

if not for ordination, then as an expansion of their roles. Because I'm curious, I know that Junia has been used in today as evidence that women can be pastors, but I'm curious, like I'm kind of tracking through history what people said about the passage. When did they interpret it as women's ordination or as expanding women's roles, things like that. in my opinion, if I were making an argument for women's ordination, what I would say is that Paul says that we're...

first are called apostles, second prophets, and that the church is built on the foundation of apostles and prophets, and it looks like there were women in both of those roles. So I find that significant personally. And there's other female apostles that I cover in my dissertation, but that's, yeah, that would definitely be a bullet point for me in favor of women pastors. Cool. If that makes sense. Yeah.

that's wonderful. Wow. Thank you. I can't wait for your dissertation and hopefully it'll be a book and we'll all be able to read it. That'll be super cool. thank you so much for being with us. What a rich and interesting and hopefully charitable conversation. Thank you dear listener or viewer for being with us today on this episode of the Enter the Bible podcast. You can get more

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