#95 Does 1 Corinthians 14 Mean Women Can’t Lead? + Dr. Lynn Cohick

Today is a part two of our previous conversation with Dr. Lynn Kowik, speaking about a very controversial verse in 1

Corinthians chapter 14, verses 33 through 34. What is going on there that it was required to tell women to be silent?

There were stages back then, but no microphones. That's really what's being talked about, is do women have an authority to be able to speak before a congregation about spiritual matters?

Paul is totally fine with women praying and prophesying. Is he talking about theology in the

Bible? So it's women leading men, even in theology. Hello, hello.

Welcome to Biblically Speaking. My name is Cassian Bellino, and I'm your host. In this podcast, we talk about the

Bible in simple terms, with experts, PhDs, and scholarly theologians to make understanding

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Thank you so much for listening. Now let's get to the show. Hello, hello. Welcome to Biblically Speaking.

I'm your host, Cassian Bolino, and today is a part two of our previous conversation with Dr. Lynn Kowick speaking about women's role in churches.

Can they teach? Can they speak? What role do they have? Can they lead? And we had a wonderful discussion going through Jesus's interactions with various women throughout the

Bible, and then a little bit about Paul's interactions with women after Jesus's passing. But today is going to be a very special episode where we dedicate all of it to a very controversial verse, one that I have been used against, people that have used it against me, prohibiting me from getting on a stage using a microphone.

And if I want to speak Biblically, I also want to live Biblically. And does that also include me not getting on stages, me not leading, me not teaching?

If that's what God says, then I won't do it. But is that what God says? So today we're going to be spending all of our time in 1

Corinthians chapter 14, verses 33 through 34, women should be silent.

And to exegete on this, exegetically talk about it in context.

Exegete, yeah, exegete, there you go. Exegete, there's the verb. There's the verb. Yeah. Well, you have Dr. Lynn Koek.

And if you have not heard part one, it would be a lot better if you went back and you listened to part one. But if you are here, stay.

Dr. Lynn Koek, you are more than credentialed to speak on this. For those that don't know, you are a distinguished professor of New Testament and director of Houston Theological Seminary at Houston Christian University.

You hold a PhD in New Testament and Christian origins from the University of Pennsylvania. And you've published major work on Ephesians, Philippians, women in the

New Testament and the social world of early Christianity. Welcome back to the show. Oh, thank you.

Yeah, well, we had so much fun last time. And being a professor, I just keep talking and talking and talking.

So we had to do a part two. Everything you said was so wonderful.

There was no way I was gonna cut you off. And so right at the end, I was like, you know what, we're just gonna, I'm gonna get another episode out of you.

So 1 Corinthians 14. I've actually spoken with a couple of male mentors being in the

Biblically Speaking podcasting. And I wanted to get into sitting on a stage and co -hosting a live discussion, kind of like what we're doing, but in person.

And seriously, this guy, he said, I wouldn't go to that event because I don't fundamentally believe that women should be on stage.

Women should have a microphone. And I was so ill -informed that I didn't know what to say back because I wanted to respect what he was saying, being like a scholar and more well -informed.

But it's also like, I've gone to church and seen women on stage with microphones. Are they wrong? I'm sure that you've experienced something very similar, but I would love to understand the context of 1

Corinthians. What is going on there that it was even required to tell women to be silent?

Right, right, yeah, yeah. Well, and it is kind of funny to think of, there were stages back then, but no microphones.

And the churches were meeting in homes where there weren't actually stages in the homes.

So it is a little funny how we attach authority to certain things like microphones, because that's really what's being talked about is do women have an authority to be able to speak before a congregation about spiritual matters?

And so, yeah, I think, I mean, we're at the end, we're gonna pick up at the end of Corinthians, but just to kind of give a brief overview of what the letter is about, these people have real problems.

And I love this church because I feel like it's so modern also. You know, they have jealousies, they have cliques, they are fascinated by wealth and social status, and you just see all of this.

You also find that they are really, they love the showy kind of stuff, including speaking in tongues.

That is a big deal for them. And we pick that, that's the immediate concern or question in chapter 14.

But up till then, I wanna just remind people in chapter seven of 1

Corinthians, when there's a conversation about having sexual relations in marriage, whether that is okay.

Some in Corinth felt that maybe they should just live a completely ascetic or celibate life.

And Paul is saying, nope, if you're married, you can enjoy the marriage bed. But Paul says, in this marriage, the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does, which is very much like the social world that he grew up in.

But Paul then continues that the husband does not have authority over his own body, but his wife does.

And that was astonishing for them to hear, for anybody to hear.

That was very, Paul was very counter -cultural here, or maybe we say very gospel cultured here.

And so there is, Paul expects within the relationship of husband and wife for there to be a mutuality at the most intimate level.

And in his world, the husband was supposed to have kind of the final say, especially or including the bedroom.

So for Paul to say, nope, this is actually, this is mutuality here, was revolutionary.

And I mentioned that because our passage that we'll look at in a minute, talks about women asking their husbands at home.

So I wanted to kind of paint the picture. What does Paul think home is like? And I suggest that there is a mutuality here.

Real quick. Paul speaks of a mutuality in marriage in other places as well, but we'll just stay right here in Corinth.

When it comes to these like counter -cultural beliefs of like men have control, where did that come from?

Like, what is he talking against? Was that like a Roman belief? Oh, yeah.

It goes back to Aristotle. Aristotle's very clear that the male is superior.

It is, the male is the standard. He'll talk about how the female is the privation of male.

So it's not just that women are different, but that women are less than. And that was the standard view more or less in the

Roman world. And you, I mean, Judaism had

Genesis where both men and women, male and female, were made in the image and likeness of God.

And I think Paul believed that there was, again, a mutuality both, yeah, the female doesn't have less of the image of God in her because she's female.

They both, male and female, are made in the image of God in that likeness, and there is no superiority.

We sometimes hear that, well, because Adam was created first, that somehow that gives him priority.

But in the narrative of the text, the point is that there's one and that one is lonely.

And so God creates a second one, not out of the dust, like he did the first one, but out of the material of this first one and creates a second.

And when the first one wakes up, i .e. Adam, he says, oh, this is a woman.

So in the Hebrew, just like man and woman are kind of spelled the same. So in Hebrew, ish, isha, this is man.

And this is woman, and they're very much alike. So all that to say,

I'm sorry doing all this background stuff, but I think sometimes when we need to jump into the text, it's like we have all of these previous assumptions that we haven't laid on the table yet.

We just bring them to our interpretation, but we've got to lay them out so that we know, kind of, you have to show your math.

You know what I mean? You can't just give the answer, you have to show the math. So we're showing the math here. So anyway, when we get then to, yeah, to chapter 11, there in the first part of that chapter, we have

Paul talking about men and women and how they look when they're praying and prophesying.

And the question is, it's either head coverings or it's how hair is, style.

Women at this time had long hair. I mean, that's, we see that everywhere.

And most of the time it was tied up with cloth or jewels.

I mean, they didn't have rubber bands. They didn't have rubber. They didn't have rubber bands. Sometimes they would braid their hair.

You know, you just got to keep it out of your face as you're working, because everybody's working, right? Unless you're fabulously rich.

So there were also ways in which you could put a, like a piece of cloth over the back of your head to kind of hide your hair.

It wasn't veils like, you know, that would cover your face. But men also, pagan men, when they would go to the altar, one of their pagan temples, they often would pull up their toga and cover their, the back of their heads.

We have lots of statues that show that. So there are these practices and the

Corinthians are trying to figure out practices as well.

And at any rate, there's a lot of, it's a very hard passage to interpret, but everyone agrees that the women are praying and prophesying.

And so that's the thing. I think it is so confusing to be, you know, like reading this and seeing verses like, you know, chapter 11, verse four, every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head.

But everyone who prays or prophesies with their head uncovered dishonors their head. For a woman does not cover her head, she might as well have her hair cut off, but she's disgraced for a woman to have her hair cut off.

It's very back and forth. It's so hard to keep up. It's like, okay, so men, no covering, women, long hair, but also covered.

Yeah, and the Greek can talk about just having down the head. So you kind of have to translate that.

And I have to say, it is not, we don't know what practice they're referring to.

And when you look at even the pagan authors who talk about how they go to the, you know, how they comport themselves as they are on this, you know, parade festival, going up to the temple of the

God or the goddess, even they, when they comment on what is being worn, they're not really sure why it is that men are doing what they're doing.

It's just back, back, back later in tradition. And now, you know, they've forgotten how it started. So the, but the point that I think we need to really be clear about in this case is whatever else is going on,

Paul is totally fine with women praying and prophesying. And this is happening in the congregation.

So this isn't something like ladies' Bible study and men's Bible study. This is church.

And in church, women are praying and prophesying. And both of those are public events.

People prayed aloud. And this is, you know, the congregation speaking to God and people prophesied.

A prophet is someone that speaks on behalf of God to the congregation. So it's, prophecy isn't just telling the future.

Sometimes it is, but for the most part, it's the prophet tells the people what is

God's will. What is the good that you should do? What is the bad that you should avoid? What should our focus be?

As we try to be faithful followers of Jesus. So we know that Paul is totally fine with women praying and prophesying there in Corinth.

Then if we just jump quickly to the book of Acts, chapter 18, we find Priscilla and Aquila.

So this is a couple that Paul lived with. They're tent makers, just like him.

And he lived with them in Corinth for, you know, almost two years and did his ministry there.

And they had a house church in their house. When the three of them leave

Corinth and go to Ephesus, Priscilla and Aquila start a house church in Ephesus.

And it's, there's some debate on what role of leadership the house church host had, but I think there's general consensus that they held at least some form of leadership.

They didn't just open their house and let somebody else lead. So Priscilla, who's mentioned first four out of the six times that this pair is talked about, indicates that she had a prominent role.

When you name people, you normally start with the more socially superior or wealthy or well -known or whatever, you put their name first.

And so it's intriguing that her name comes first at times, but that just, it's the social convention that indicates that she had something more than her husband did.

But even more, I want to focus on, I think it's verse 20. Oh, because she's listed before her husband. Mm -hmm, mm -hmm, yep.

Not every time, but a majority of times, yeah. So it is safe to assume maybe that when she had a house church, it wasn't him running it, it was her running it?

That's right, or both of them together. Again, this theme of mutuality, it permeates

Paul's letters. So when she is there in Ephesus, another one of Paul's coworkers by the name of Apollos, he's very educated, but he seems to have a weak area in his theology.

And so the text tells us that Priscilla and Aquila took him aside, which is like an appropriate way, you don't want to call somebody out in public, took him aside and privately talked with him to give him a deeper understanding of the theological point that he was.

Was he talking about theology in a wrong way, or he was just not as educated? No, yeah, there's an issue.

He knew only the baptism of John is what Luke tells us here in Acts chapter 18, verse 25.

So he's definitely a believer, but his understanding of baptism was a little bit limited.

And so Priscilla and Aquila, when they heard him teaching, they instructed him in their home and explained to him the way of God more adequately.

And it's not that - Oh, so it's women leading men, even in theology. Oh yeah, oh yeah. And this is the woman who all the

Corinthians would have known. I mean, she hosted Paul, like she would have been known in Corinth.

So we've got women who are praying, we have women who are prophesying, we have a woman from Corinth who taught one of Paul's coworkers,

Apollos. So we have all of this data that then when we come to chapter 14, and we realize, okay, now the real topic here is speaking in tongues.

And this would be angelic language. So it's not exactly like Pentecost.

At Pentecost, people spoke in, like it'd be like if I start speaking

Russian and you knew Russian. I didn't know Russian, but I was actually speaking a human language.

But because you knew Russian, you actually heard the gospel in your native language.

So, but in chapter 14, excuse me, I'm just gonna grab a quick drink here.

So just because my brain needs to be rooted somewhere, we've mentioned Corinth and we're mentioning

Ephesus. Priscilla and Aquila were in Corinth? Yep, and then they moved to Ephesus and then they moved to Rome.

They'd come from Rome, went to Corinth, then went to Ephesus, then went back to Rome. So in Acts with Apollos, they were in Corinth and now in chapter 14 of 1

Corinthians, they're in Ephesus? No, in, and I'm glad you asked the question.

Sorry about that. Yeah, we are jumping around a little bit. So they started with Paul in Corinth, although they were believers already when

Paul got there. They had been exiled from Rome. There was a bit of a kerfuffle with one of the emperors who wanted to kick out

Christians, so he did. And they went to Corinth. And they were there for a while in Corinth.

And then they went with Paul to Ephesus. Paul only stayed a wee little time in Ephesus that time, but they stayed for a while and started this house church.

Then after a while, they ended up going back to Rome. So we hear about them in Acts 18.

We hear about them in Romans 16. So their name is kind of scattered.

This couple is scattered throughout the letters and in Acts. But while they're in Ephesus, that's when they meet

Apollos. Got it, and now that we're in 1 Corinthians 14, the women that are speaking the angelic language, we're in Ephesus?

No, they're in Corinth. Sorry, yeah, so I know you have all these people.

It's like a soap opera, you know what I mean? It's like all this drama. So we've got Priscilla and Aquila who live different places.

And while they're in Corinth, Paul lives with them and they minister. Then they go to Ephesus, and Paul is there just a short time.

Later, he'll go back and stay for a long time. My point in mentioning the Ephesus is that I wanted to show that this woman,

Priscilla, if she is teaching Apollos in Ephesus, she has to have been teaching people, men and women in Corinth.

She's a teacher. She has a house church. So I'm trying to build a picture of what women were doing in Corinth.

And we do that through what Paul is talking about in his letter to them, but also we see what they're doing from the book of Acts.

And Priscilla is another example of using her voice, in this case, in her home with her husband, the two of them,

I mean, it's this mutuality here, and they're talking to Apollos. They're teaching him, they're explaining things to him, probably this issue of baptism.

So that tells you that women,

Paul was okay with women speaking the gospel to men, even teaching them more deeply.

And as I say, they privately talked with Apollos, not because women shouldn't speak publicly, but because they didn't want to seem like they were calling him out, kind of correcting him publicly.

Instead, let's, hey, I think I could help you out here a little bit in your teaching.

Like today, we would do that. We wouldn't, well, unless sometimes people do correct others publicly and the rest of us, well, and it just feels, you feel uncomfortable.

It's like, really? Couldn't you have just talked in the hallway about that? So anyway, so I'm trying to build this picture that women's voices would have been heard in these congregational meetings.

We know one who's named Priscilla, but then there are others who are praying and prophesying.

So all of this then leads us to what is Paul talking about in chapter 14?

He's talking about speaking in tongues. And the Paul, Paul will say, yeah,

I wish y 'all would speak in tongues like I do. Like, the sense you get is

Paul had this angelic prayer language and he loved praying to God in tongues.

But he said, when I'm among you, I wanna be able to speak five intelligible words rather than all these tongues.

Because I want you when we're in a group to feel uplifted, to feel encouraged, to feel taught.

And so if you look at the beginning of chapter 14, you find that Paul says, desire the gift of prophecy.

There are many gifts of the spirit, but desire the gift of prophecy because that is what edifies the body.

The Corinthians were very individualistic. So they just kind of wanted their own, build up their own brand, we might say today.

But Paul is saying, no, if you're speaking in the church, then prophesy.

Those who prophesy are greater than those who speak in tongues. So that, so he encourages the whole congregation to speak for the strengthening and encouraging and encouragement and comforting of the rest of the group.

There's no sense that it's only men who are told to prophesy here at the beginning of the chapter.

So as we get then to going through the chapter, we find that Paul kind of concludes part of his argument in verse 33,

God is not a God of disorder, but of peace. And his point is that if you have a tongue to say, you have to have that tongue interpreted, otherwise you have to be quiet.

And if you have a prophecy to say, you can say it, but you can't interrupt someone else who is doing their prophecy.

It's, you can go in order. Don't be interrupting each other. Just the picture

Paul paints is that the Corinthians, they're all just kind of babbling. They're all just kind of speaking over each other.

There's just a lot of chaos. And Paul is saying, you can wait your turn and you can be silent if you're speaking in tongues and there's no one there to interpret.

Like this is not a free for all, right? Because the whole point is that each and every person there will feel

God speaking to them in a word of encouragement or maybe chastisement, or some new way of thinking about who

God is or what the redemption that they have in Christ entails. So all of that.

And then you move to verse 34 and 35. I wanna take a minute and say thank you to the recording service that has made this podcast possible,

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I cannot recommend Riverside enough. If this is helpful for you, I ask that you click the affiliate link

I provided in the show notes description. It costs nothing extra to you and it gives a small kickback to me, which helps the channel stay alive.

Thank you so much. Now back to the show. It seems like he really points out though, he's like, all right guys, everyone's talking too much.

And women specifically, no talking. That's what it feels like. And I can understand the angelic languages and the chaos and, you know,

God kind of wanting order there, but then it just like pinpoints women of like, but women specifically, no talking.

So how do we do that? Yeah, well, and I would say that there's an interesting textual variant, manuscript variant that I need to bring up because if people look at this in commentaries, they'll find this.

I just want to explain. Okay. So we have manuscripts of the biblical texts and just like you might've done in your college biology textbook, you write in the margins or something like that.

You just underline, you highlight. If you don't mind just repeating, we have manuscripts that say, you could just cut off right after that.

Sure. Thank you. So we have manuscripts of the biblical texts from, you know, just a couple hundred years from when

Paul wrote them. So they're quite early that, you know, we can be very confident that we basically have the word of God unchanged, but they were copied.

And just like maybe you marked up your biology textbook in school, underlining, highlighting, writing in the margins, so too the scribes sometimes made marginal notes.

And what we find in one type of manuscript is verses 34 and 35 are actually found at the end of the chapter, not where they are here.

Number 34 and 35. Yeah, yeah. It's an odd textual variant. We rarely have anything like this.

It's a manuscript variant. And so some conservative

Bible scholars, so I'm, you know, it's not like this is something way out there.

Scholars who value this as absolutely the word of God also wonder, given the manuscript evidence, if this was something a scribe wrote in the margins.

Hey, women should remain silent, right? They're not allowed to speak. That a scribe wrote that.

And then a later copyist was like, oh, is this supposed to go in the text? And some of them put it in at number 34 and 35 and others put it after, what is it, verse 40?

Yeah, after verse 40. That's possible. So it should have been a footnote.

Yeah, it could have been a footnote or just a note by some scribe. How does the text change it being either in the verse versus a footnote?

Well, what it would mean is that Paul didn't actually write it, but that it was a comment made later, right?

Oh, that does change it. That does change it, yes. But that may not, it may just be that it was a copyist error, that Paul always had it and it's just somebody messed up their copying and ended up putting it after verse 40.

But 34 and 35, in other words, can be found in either where they are or at the end of the chapter.

But I think that the reason why some people, and again, I'm only using

Christian exegetes here. I'm not talking about people who don't love the word of God here.

Some of these commentators who think that it was actually a scribal addition, say so in part because it sounds so different than anything

Paul has said up to this point. Because women have been talking. They're not supposed to be quiet in the churches, like they're praying and prophesying.

And we're encouraged to prophesy. It's a gift of the spirit that's not given only to men.

So it just seems so odd here. Right, he's saying pray and prophesy, pray and prophesy.

And then women should remain silent in the churches. They're not allowed to speak, but be in submission as the law says. If they wanna inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home, for it's disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.

Or did the word of God originate with you? Or are you the only people at his reach? You're right, it does almost like cut to camera, whisper to the audience and then go back to the original scene.

It just, it does feel like the breaking of a fourth wall. Right, right.

Well, there is no law. The law of the Old Testament never says that women aren't allowed to speak, but be.

Submission, yes. I mean, all of us are to submit to government authorities.

I mean, submission in the ancient world wasn't something only women did. Every man, except the emperor, submitted to some other man at some point, somewhere.

You know what I mean? Like it just, it was protocol. It's part of the honor -shame culture. So the women remain silent if, so I'm gonna give two interpretations and I'll let people know.

First, I think actually Paul is citing the Corinthian idea here. But if you think

Paul is saying women should be silent in the churches and the term that he uses for silent here and then the term that he uses that's translated to speak, both of those can be understood to be disruptive.

Either they are, they're, I don't know, like asking questions or interrupting or, you know, they're not behaving appropriately.

Let's say their husband is prophesying, but they think, well, that's actually not really solid.

You know, your theology there. And so they speak up. Well, that would be seen as disrespectful and actually interrupting anybody would be seen as disrespectful.

But perhaps it is especially evident within men and women, within husbands and wives.

So that, for those who think this is Paul speaking, they would argue that it's a particular situation that is creating yet again more chaos.

But there is no law in the Old Testament. I mean, nobody knows, as the law says, like nobody knows where that's from.

And so it sounds a little sketchy, like what is Paul quoting here, right?

If they want to inquire, this is verse 35, about something they should ask their husbands at home.

Okay, fair enough. But let's just pause for a minute and think about how the early church looked.

There were maybe 25 % of the people in this church were slaves.

So the slave women, they had no husbands. They're not gonna be able to ask anybody at home, certainly not their husbands.

And then when you think of the percentage of men and women who were widowers and widows, that percentage is really high.

We have like another, for example, a biblical character we know of from the book of Acts, Berenice, who is the granddaughter of Herod the

Great. By the time she's 22, she's been married twice and widowed and is getting married for a third time.

And that's, she's 22. So it's not, I mean,

I'm just imagining 25 % are slaves. That would include the slave women.

They're not asking their husbands at home. You're gonna have widows. I don't know what the percentage is there, but it's not small.

So you have a number of women who can't ask their husbands at home about whatever a question is.

And it is not the case that it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in church. They are praying and prophesying.

So it's not disgraceful. And the marriage is a marriage of mutuality.

So it's like, it just feels, this is why I think that Paul is citing the

Corinthians, and I think he does it a couple of, well, we know he does it a couple of times. They, in chapter six, and they quote,

Paul quotes them, and then he corrects them. They have a line, and this is from verse 12 of chapter six.

"'I have the right to do anything,' you say." Paul continues, but not everything is beneficial.

"'I have the right to do anything,' he says it, he repeats it twice.

And in the English translation, we add, you say, but that's not in the

Greek. We have to say it in English to make it sound that way, nor are there quotation marks.

There's no punctuation in the Greek texts. So we have to add that. And I think the translation does a good job.

It is something, it's the slogan that the Corinthians have.

And hey, I can do anything." And Paul's like, well, you know what? Actually, not everything is beneficial.

Don't be going to prostitutes. That's what chapter six is. But he'll say that also in chapter 10, when he's talking about them going to an idol.

This is in 10 .23. I have the right to do anything. Yeah, but participating in a festival at a temple,

I mean, that's actually idolatry. So you actually can't just eat anything, right?

So we know that there are slogans that Paul quotes them and then he challenges them.

And that's what I think is happening here. When they are some of the

Corinthian men, want women to not speak as a way,

I think to be more like Aristotle's ideal that men should talk and women should not.

So they're sounding a lot more like Plutarch or Juvenal to authors of the first century who sometimes get frustrated.

Juvenal, who writes satires, he talks about, he's so frustrated some of these dinner parties that he goes to and women are quoting the ancient philosophers and whatnot.

And he says, oh, it sounds like people banging pots in the kitchen. Juvenal is very cranky.

Anyway, so I could imagine a couple of the Corinthian men who are very much into status anyway, trying to inflate themselves by trying to push down women.

And so, ask at home, don't speak here.

But then Paul in verse 26, I think he says, wait a minute, did the word of God originate with you?

Like, are you creating a new law here? No, no, you can't start this new practice, yeah.

So anyway, that's what I think is going on here in 34 and 35.

This is actually the Corinthians who are frustrated at Paul's teaching.

They don't want women to be able to exercise the gift of prophecy. They don't want women to be able to pray and prophesy freely in the church.

They're frustrated with that. And Paul's basically saying, too bad. You know, it's what the

Holy Spirit does. This is such a refreshing thought. And I've never heard of the variant argument.

And to be honest, what I thought you were gonna say, cause this is, I've spoken to a lot of people, a lot of scholars, what

I've heard, and I would love to hear your take on this, is that he's actually speaking to women that are worshiping a goddess in Ephesus.

And that's who he's saying, you shouldn't be loudly worshiping this idol, this non -ultimate

God. And that, like, I've heard arguments in the past that maybe 1

Corinthians is discussing a totally different group of people who are not even worshiping God. They're worshiping a different goddess.

And then they do it loudly by yelling. And so he's coming to them and telling them not to worship a different God.

What do you say to scholars that might argue that this is what that verse is about? Yeah, back in the,

I don't know, 70s maybe, there was a professor,

Professor Weyer, who argued, and it was quite persuasive within scholarship, that, this was especially for chapter 11, that the women in Corinth who were praying and prophesying, they were doing so as though they were

Mainads who are the worshipers, devotees of Dionysus.

Euripides has a famous play about this where the women are, like, possessed.

And so they have all these ecstatic experiences. And it includes having their hair flowing down and just kind of being crazy.

And so the argument put forward was that what you had in Corinth were women who were used to experiencing

God, but with a small g here, in this kind of ecstatic way.

And when they then came to church, they brought those practices with them. Fewer people are arguing that today.

And I think, but oftentimes people assume women are doing something wrong.

More recently, Lucy Pepiot in her argument says, I don't think it's the women that are doing stuff.

I think it's the men. The men are frustrated with, maybe not all the men, but a group of men in Corinth are frustrated with this mutuality that exists in the church.

And they want to reestablish a hierarchy that is more consistent with the wider secular culture, or, well, not secular, but you know what

I mean? Pagan culture. Yeah. Yeah, so I love that idea that it's actually the men that are trying to reassert their pagan values.

And Paul is saying, nope, life in the spirit means women and men, slaves and free,

Jew and Gentile. They all are filled with the spirit and they can all have gifts of the spirit.

And anyone from any social class can have the gift of prophecy should the

Holy Spirit give it. Wow. Very interesting. Thank you for that background. I mean,

I have a couple of scholars I need to call now and have discussions with them equipped with this new knowledge, but kind of applying it today.

I mean, I can assume I know what you're gonna say, but kind of going back to that guy at the beginning who said, you know, I wouldn't go to an event if you're on stage with a microphone.

Well, how do I like speak truth into somebody that might, you know, the next guy that comes to me is like, well, you're a woman and women aren't meant to teach.

And, you know, men are supposed to teach. And I've even heard arguments, you know, like women can teach as long as there's not a guy around to teach.

And of course the word of God has to be spread. So if it has to be from a woman, so be it. What is like the most loving, theologically sound way to respond?

Well, I do like to point to women who actually taught and that's why I mentioned Priscilla.

I mean, and so then you have to say, well, she was an exception. But then you think there are actually a lot of exceptions.

Did you just go down the list? Women were doing a lot of things and not condemned for it.

I mean, so that's one approach. I would just say, let's look at the narrative.

Don't just look at a verse as though it's a propositional truth that you kind of pull out from the text itself.

Even letters, they involve a narrative. These are real people that Paul's writing to. And Paul wants them to grow closer to Jesus and be more faithful in their discipleship.

So he wants to praise what they do well and to try and have them stop doing what is a problem.

And so we have to kind of enter into the narrative world. Secondly, I would say,

I just don't see the eternal God, creator of heaven and earth and all the galaxies as somehow being stumped to not find a guy around to do something.

This idea that, well, there weren't any guys around. I've heard that a lot with like Deborah, the

Judge Deborah. And I just think, seriously? Like he had, there were thousands, tens of thousands of Jewish, well,

Israelite males and he couldn't find one for like a whole generation?

Wow, that's not the God I worship. So I think that's a lame argument. And I would finally say,

I think the, I go back to a story that, or an event, a situation that I had.

One of, I taught for a number of years at Wheaton College outside of Chicago.

And one of the students that had graduated, a young man, we were at a ball game, baseball game.

And he said to me, and I was raised by parents who are egalitarian, my mom, maybe both parents were attorneys, something like that.

And he said, but I'm not, I'm a complementarian. This is like 10 years ago, I realized the labels change, but this is what he was saying.

And I would love to know how you distinguish both of those. Yeah, well, at this time, as I say, this would have been,

I don't know, 2016, something like that. What he said was,

I'm a complementarian. Okay, I mean, it's like, I'm just curious. That's all. And I said, why?

And he said, because an egalitarian position doesn't tell me how to be a man.

And I thought, wow, that is so perceptive. Yeah, complementary is, you know, male fill roles that women can't and vice versa, and together they can fill all roles.

So complementary would essentially allow this man to do things that the woman can't. Right, and I would say that complementarianism isn't just about doing different things, but that have an equal value, but rather men are able to do things that are of greater social, public, and personal value than women are.

That is to say that men can lead the community and women can't.

It's not like men take out the garbage and women wash the dishes. Both of those are what we call chores, right?

They're kind of valued equally, but the differences when men, complementarians, when they talk about difference, they're not talking again about sort of generic difference.

Again, you'd say I, in this case personally, I mowed the grass and Jim took out the garbage.

I loved mowing the grass. So that was the chore I did. And they're all kind of like chores.

In the case of what this student was saying to me is,

I don't know how to explain how I'm different through the egalitarian beliefs, which made me sad because I thought, well,

I think they're actually, they could articulate differences, but the differences aren't ones related to power and authority.

They're related to mutuality and different skills and propensities.

But what we end up doing is we create a hierarchical evaluation of those skills or those demeanors or whatever.

So women are more nurturing. Well, I think that a broad brush stroke might be the case, but we all know men who are just so great with babies.

It's like, great, you're great with babies. I mean, we just push it to an nth degree. But I think the biggest thing for me is when you talk about they have different roles, men and women have different roles, what they mean is hierarchical roles, not generic.

Like I said, the roles are not chores. The roles are leading and guiding the community differences.

And I just don't see the biblical texts supporting that construction of men and women working together.

You don't see the texts supporting hierarchical roles where men are placed above women.

You see the texts continuously reflect a mutualistic relationship where the roles that women play are just as important as the men's, both in the house and outside the house.

Yes, yes. So that's great news. They call it good news for a reason.

Yeah, which doesn't mean that I think men and women are the same. Absolutely don't. I mean, they're not the same.

I have, you and I have a very complex hormonal system and my husband sort of has like testosterone, more or less at any given time.

We never talk about it that way. We talk about, oh, women are more emotional. I think this is the

Aristotelian way of viewing women. But how about if we said, women are more complex hormonally because we have this complex system that nurtures a baby in the womb.

And then once the baby's out here, a complex switch of hormones and now we produce milk.

Like that's just awesome and cool. And we're designed that way. That's a difference.

But we're designed to raise this baby with its father. You know what

I mean? And so there's difference, but it's not hierarchical. That's what I'm trying to suggest, yeah.

So like just on the topic of, we have differences, we can't do the same job, but we're also very mutualistic and equal in the jobs that we do when it comes to like gender roles, not to like go down that rabbit hole.

What's like the best biblical explanation you could have of like, a woman and men are very different, but the role that a woman does is very important and not less than a man.

Is that like simply said, but how you would kind of argue that? Yeah, I think so much of it depends on what's the task that needs to get done.

If you, I'm 5 '3", if I stand straight. I'm shrinking, you know what

I mean? Like that's just what happens. Don't get old, Cassian. Anyway, so you put me up against a guy in their 60s.

They're still gonna be stronger than me. You want some wood cut, don't come to me first.

Actually go to somebody in their 20s, right? A guy in their 20s. So it really depends on the task you want done as to whether or not men in general are more suited than women being more suited.

And of course in our industrial, post -industrial time, I mean, you and I both could, if we were properly trained, fly a fighter jet because it doesn't require strength in the way that an infantry would require strength.

So anyway, I think you have to kind of ask yourself, well, what's the purpose?

What's the point? And I think - That's a good approach. Yeah, you know, down through the ages, women have been understood by culture, broadly speaking, as being irrational compared to men, right?

Or more emotional compared to men. And thus unable to study or articulate or lead or like be a politician or any of those kinds of things because they just, their brain wasn't capable.

We even, you know, women weren't allowed in the Olympics for the longest time. Oh, exercise, that will really be a problem.

You know, some of the things when you look back and you think, people really thought that? You're like, oh my word, you're kidding me.

But they did. And often it was sexism, right? They just, yeah.

Anyway, don't wanna go down that rabbit hole. But the point is that the, I think the, well,

I can't say it any better than Dorothy Sayers in her essay, Are Women Human? So great.

And she says, you know, you really can't say, are women better than this? Or are men better in this?

Because you have to define what this is. You have to, it has to be based on the text.

You know, not every man wants to study philosophy, but maybe some woman wants to study philosophy.

Why not? You know, it's that kind of thing. Tell me what the situation is.

And then we'd be able to say who's best suited for the job. Yeah. Okay. So I just have two final questions for you.

And this has been such a wonderful discussion. I'm so glad we allocated a whole episode towards it. So what would you, what do you want most people to understand about how

Jesus sees women? Yeah, I think

Jesus sees women as whole persons fully capable of taking up their cross and following after him.

They are capable of expressing to other men and women the gospel and they're capable of living it out to the point of even giving their lives for him, which we see definitely in the age of the martyrs.

So yeah, Jesus, Jesus is, he treats them as, yeah, as fully, totally, completely, 100 % human made in the image of God, Trinity.

And thus capable of fully leading in whatever area, you know, they're called to lead.

Noting that for the next time a guy pulls out this verse for me. And then last question, what is an assumption about women in the

Bible that going forward just needs to die? We need to kill the idea that women were silent.

All I can think of is like the word flannel graph. Do you know what I mean by flannel graph? Two dimensional, you don't have flannel graph.

Well, it's something you can Google. Back in the day when I was learning the Bible, you'd have a felt board and then on the felt board you could put felt cutout figures, you know,

Daniel, lions, and they'd stick, the felt would stick on the felt. And I feel like that is often how women, if they're talked about at all, they're seen as these two dimensional characters that really only serve to move the plot forward as men do all the action.

That's just simply not at all the case. I want people to hear women, to see women, to know that women are incredibly active.

Their voices should be echoing off the pages of the text. Beautifully said.

Thank you so much for walking slowly through this verse with me, providing context for it, answering my questions.

This is such a gift to me. Thank you so much. For those that want to continue learning from you, are there events, classes, books that they can be involved with you by?

Yes, we're hoping to launch, and I'm like two or three weeks out from launching what

I hope will be some really fun classes that anybody can sign up for.

And it's just, you know, for us to learn together. So I would encourage women to check out my website and check it out at the, let's say, beginning or mid

May. We should have more information on that, on my plans.

And I do trips, so people can come with me to Italy. We've got some,

I think coming, yeah, that's the end of, it's the beginning of January this year, this, you know, 2027. Looks like I'll be doing something also with Paul, Paul's journey on a cruise.

That would be September 27, although that's not yet, you know, chiseled in stone.

But yeah, so my website is the place to check it out.

And that also is, yep, you can do lynnkoek .com and the other site will be

Let Her Lead. And that is coming online very soon.

So we're switching over. What are these cruises? Ah, I know. Well, I haven't signed it on the dotted line yet.

I mean, we're just in the process of finishing it out. So I'm gonna have to hold you in suspense there, but it would be a cruise that would go to, you know,

Philippi and Athens and Corinth and Ephesus and that kind of thing. Wow, okay. Super fun. Yeah, yeah, super fun.

I'll link both below. That's amazing. I'm so glad that you're sharing that. That's such a great opportunity. I love that. Thank you again for your time, your wisdom and your guidance on this.

It's always a joy having you on and I'll find another reason to bring you back. Oh, absolutely. Well, I'll already say yes, no matter what.