Which one of these two are supposed to be servant-steward rulers of Eden?
I think the answer is going to be: «yeah.
Like, why are you asking me to pick?»
Alright, I'm just going to lump a bunch of questions that are all about
what is your view of women in leadership in the church today?
Can women be pastors?
Your position on the complementarian versus
mutualist or egalitarian point of view.
So, and then all the passages that revolve around that.
1 Timothy 2 and Phoebe being a deliverer of the letter.
How do you sort it? Where are you at?
Well, some of these things are really peripheral.
Like, you know, Phoebe being a deacon or delivering something.
Why do we have to assign high church leadership status to that?
Okay. Now, the passage is important because of the qualifications for a deacon,
which get mimicked in the qualifications for a pastor.
So, if Phoebe passes the test,
and the test is essentially identical for a pastor figure,
well, that matters because it's the same set of criteria.
So, in my estimation, that is an important passage for it.
I have to say this, and I don't want this audience,
it'll probably just make you laugh if you understand this,
but this is probably in the same bucket,
but still not viewed as negatively as eschatology and chronology.
Okay. And what goes into that bucket?
Questions that are ultimately unsolvable.
Okay. The whole women in ministry thing.
I can give you a beautiful argument for it,
and I can give you a beautiful argument against it.
I can rebut every point of one and rebut every point of the other.
We should have a debate.
Well, I don't know what you're going to come up with at this point,
but here's why I think women in ministry makes sense.
Okay. This is a little bit different: because of the Edenic ideal.
The Edenic ideal.
Okay. To me, that is a point of resolution in my head for this.
I can argue against Junia Julia.
I can argue for it.
I can argue this and that qualification.
Oh, wonderful, women passed the tests of elders in these passages.
Well, why don't we have women priests in Israel?
And then you could say, oh, well, we kind of did,
because Zipporah in Exodus 4 performs the duty of a priest, doesn't she?
Now, there's no priesthood, but she still does it.
They even use the technical term for the knife for circumcision that the priest.
I can go on and on and on and on.
I am a master of both positions.
What do you do with Deborah?
What was that?
What do you do with Deborah?
She's a prophetess.
Are all prophets pastors?
Are all pastors prophets?
I mean, there's a division of the gifts.
So, again, if you're going to say this,
and if you're going to loop the prophecy thing over to the eldership
and the ministry thing, it's not quite doable
because Paul says that not everybody has the same gift.
Well, women have the same—well, really? Like, where does he say that?
In other words, again, I can argue both sides of this
and shoot at the other side real nicely.
So what resolves it in my head, what makes me feel positive about
an egalitarian position,
is ultimately, I think, if we were to go back to Eden and ask this question:
which one of these two are supposed to be servant-steward rulers of Eden?
I think the answer is going to be: yeah.
Like, why are you asking me to pick?
Okay, and to me, it is that simple.
I don't really care about any of the other arguments
because I can build them and I can tear them down.
It's just the way it is.
So it's not as bad of a situation as chronology and eschatology,
but it's one of these things where if you can't sort of reduce it to one thing
and come up with a resolution,
then I think you're going to end up spending so much more time on it.
And where is it going to end for you?
For me, it ends with Eden.
That's the mic drop moment there, people, right there.
It's the Edenic ideal settles it, okay?
Well, it's the simplest answer, so it's Occam's razor.
All right.