Common Denominator

I have been slowly watching Mike Winger's 13 video (45 hour) craziness. I hate to say that I'm only about 7 hours in. Sigh.

Here are the previous posts and videos.

1. His introductory video: my blog post.and video response
2.1 His material on Genesis 1: my blog post and video response
2.2 His material on Genesis 2-3: my blog post on Gen 2 and video response to both Genesis 2-3 
3. Women in the Old Testament: my blog post and my video response

Now for his two hour video on the question of whether women were elders or deacons in the early church.
___________________________
1. There are a couple aspects to Winger's videos that I find problematic. One is the atomization of the biblical text. This is the playground of fundamentalism and it is quite misleading. Fundamentalism fights its battles in the minutia -- which of course goes along with its frequent missing the big picture. Clobber verses are used to undermine the weighty principles of Scripture -- just like the Pharisees pictured in Matthew 23.

For example, he begins this two hour extravaganza with Nympha in Colossians 4. Rather than move from the clear to the unclear, he starts with the obscure. This is because, as he admits in the middle of the video, he is in the end arguing for a complementarian position. So the most effective rhetorical technique is to begin with the claim that egalitarians are overreading obscure texts. Then by the time he gets to the points he agrees with, they have long lost any credibility.

My second complaint is that he spends most of his time deconstructing extreme egalitarian comments. It reminds me of the creation debates I went to in high school where I just wanted Henry Morris and Duane Gish to get to the evidence for creationism. They seemed to spend a lot more time quoting evolutionists. I would agree that many of the things Winger quotes are overreads -- some even extreme.

But that's ultimately a diversion. Rhetorically, being caught in an overreach undermines your case. But it doesn't actually mean that your basic claims are wrong. His videos often come off like hit jobs on egalitarian scholars.

2. So, we need to start with the big picture before we get to the obscure verses. What were elders and deacons in the early church? When I come to Colossians 4 and hear that Nympha had a church in her house, I think, "I bet she was one of the elders." The same thing for Lydia in Acts 16: "I bet she was an elder in the church that met in her house." Is it a certainty? No. But given my sense of the church from the New Testament as a whole, it seems probable to me.

(At some point, we'll have to reckon with how unique 1 Timothy is in the Pauline corpus. It often reads like an end of ministry systematization rather than Pauline rules that were in place from Day 1. Indeed, the teaching with regard to widows in 1 Timothy 5 is significantly different from his teaching in 1 Corinthians 7, reflecting less a sense of Christ's immanent return.

(These differences have led most non-evangelical scholars to think it dates to decades after Paul had passed. But even from an evangelical perspective, we should probably see it as Paul looking to the time after his passing more than as a snapshot of how things were always done during his ministry.)

3. What were elders (presbyteroi)? I suspect they were built off the synagogue model. Large enough assemblies had a council of elders to help guide the church, like a board of elders today. Think Sanhedrin. In some cases, a whole city may have had a council of elders.

Given this model, you can see that Winger and I are bringing a different set of lenses to this question. I'm pretty sure that he sees an elder as something like a lead pastor. I can see where that would make the assumption that Nympha or Lydia was the overseer of the church in their house seem like more of a stretch. By the way, I agree with him that elder (presbyteros) and overseer (episkopos) both referred to the same role in the earliest church. 

I also disagree with him that the primary function of an elder was teaching. He gets that from one line in the description of an overseer in 1 Timothy 3. But just because an overseer should have the ability to communicate the truth doesn't mean they were something like a teaching pastor. Talk about overreads. He systematizes a bunch of stuff here that the biblical texts don't.

That's another thing I find problematic about his treatments. He doesn't take seriously enough the fact that these books were not written to us -- which is what they say. He seems to have a sense that what the text leaves out is a message for us. But the things the text leaves out are often things that everyone knew at the time of writing. If I write a letter to my mom, I don't have to tell her I'm her son. 

In the same way, the things left out of the biblical texts are some of the most commonly held assumptions -- not the things we can ignore or assume aren't true. Were women commonly elders? The text doesn't say because it was common knowledge one way or another.

So, if there were likely multiple elders in a house church, then it makes perfect sense that the one Paul or Acts associates with the church -- Chloe, Nympha, Priscilla and Aquila, Lydia -- would be on the "elder board." I find Winger's arguments very strained in this regard. Are we absolutely sure? No. Is it likely? Yes. His stuff about Paul or Peter visiting a house and not being an elder in it was really strained. They're just passing through, after all. And who knows how long it was before the church in Lydia's house had official elders?

By the way, Paul references a church in the house of Priscilla and Aquila twice. In Romans 16, he mentions her first. In 1 Corinthians 16, he mentions him first. Winger makes some snide remark about Aquila being mentioned first. I don't know that it would be helpful for me to mock him in my video, but he seems to enjoy portraying egalitarians as stupid a little too much sometimes. It's very tempting to mock him back. But probably not helpful.

4. What were deacons? First, I reject that Acts 6 is about deacons. We don't see Stephen or Philip waiting tables. We see them preaching and evangelizing. Peter got caught with his pants down and God filled in the ministry gap. The word deacon is not used in this chapter. It's a Baptist fallacy. And "I can't help you; I've got to pray" sounds like a flimsy excuse for messing up, A-A-Ron.

If elders were the stationaries, deacons were the moving parts of the earliest churches. They were the ones that served the church. Think Epaphroditus. Think Epaphras. Think Timothy. I can't prove it, but Euodia and Syntyche fit this bill well. Phoebe is explicitly called a deacon. In short, I have a hunch that these deacons fulfilled one set of responsibilities undertaken by the modern pastor. (Another set corresponds to New Testament prophets. Yes, and teachers too.)

Buried in all his blah blah blah is his correct recognition that Phoebe was a deacon of the church of Cenchrea. He rightly notices that she is connected to a specific church, which is the distinguishing context between whether the word is "deacon" or "servant." Yes, prostatis probably has more of a sense of patron here (although BAGD is not infallible either -- a lot of early twentieth century German scholarship was deeply flawed, antisemitic, and perhaps even sexist). 

Did Phoebe read and interpret the letter of Romans to the churches at Rome. I don't think so because I think Romans 16 was a letter to Ephesus. But Winger made a comment that makes me think he doesn't know that these letters were read aloud to churches since most people were illiterate. I find nothing implausible about the suggestion that someone delivering a letter might read it for the church the first time (Sosthenes in 1 Corinthians 1:1?). I can't prove it.

Which is something else annoying about Winger's style. Showing that something isn't proven isn't the same as disproving it. I can't prove that Nympha was an elder in the church in her house. But Winger certainly didn't disprove it either. The man doth protest too much methinks.

5. Priscilla and Aquila. It's nice that he recognizes that she teaches Apollos. But he makes a big deal out of the fact that this is in private and that her husband is with her. The text makes no such big deal. They are not in their home turf when they hear him -- it's a synagogue context -- so it makes perfect sense that they would not confront him publically in the synagogue itself. The text doesn't make any point at all from the fact that they both taught him. Why wouldn't they? I certainly have never thought that Aquila wasn't a strong or knowledgable believer. She just seems to have been even more stand out.

Now we get to filling in the blanks. Did Priscilla teach other men? Nothing in the text says she didn't just as Winger points out it doesn't say she did. I have every reason to believe that, in their house church, she fully participated in the discipleship of the gatherings -- even when Paul was present. Just like the women fully participate in the small group I'm a part of. 

So where do all these boundaries come from? Not from these texts. They come from the imposition of controls from the interpretation of other verses. If we go by what these specific passages have to say, there are no boundaries on who Priscilla can teach or whether she can be an elder in her own house church.

6. I should close with brief mention of 1 Timothy 3. Yes, it assumes that most overseers and deacons will be men. No doubt they were. But it doesn't say, "And women can't be overseers or deacons." In fact, we know Phoebe was a deacon. 

This is a logical fallacy. It extends the situation the text does address and applies it to a situation the text does not address.

Think of when Paul tells the Thessalonians to abstain from sexual immorality. He addresses the "brothers." Does that leave the sisters off the hook? No. "Brothers" just addresses the primary audience he has in mind.

Bottom line: 1 Timothy 3 doesn't say "and women can't be overseers or deacons." It simply addresses the majority case, as you might expect in a patriarchal culture.

I have never taken the "wives" in 3:11 as deaconesses. I take it to refer to the wives of overseers and deacons. By extension, it would apply to the husbands of a female overseer or deacon.

This is the last section of Romans, although I still have a few holes to plug.

Romans 15:14-16:27
A. Closing (15:14-33)

• These verses close the body of the letter. The earliest papyrus manuscript of Paul's letters (p46) also puts the doxology of 16:25-27 here. See comments below on Romans 16. 
• 15:14-21. Paul understands himself to be the apostle to the Gentiles. In 15:16, Paul compares himself to a priestly minister (leitourgos), serving as a priest of the gospel (hierougeo) offering up the Gentiles to God (prospora). 
• 15:19. Miracles were part of Paul's ministry.
• Paul also had ministered already as far west as Illyricum. That's in the far northwest of Greece. When did he go there? Acts does not say. Perhaps it was while he was in Greece the first time.
• 15:20. Paul does not see it as his mission to build established churches. He is a church planter. He does not plan to stay in Rome for long but to use it as a launching point.
• 15:22-23. Paul talks about his plans. He plans to go from Rome to Spain (15:24). At present he is headed to Jerusalem (15:25).
• 15:24-29. Paul has been collecting an offering (cf. 2 Cor. 8-9) to take to Jerusalem. This offering perhaps is the fulfillment of the concern for the poor in Galatians 2:10.
• 15:27. Paul sees this gift to the Jews by the Gentiles as material reciprocity for the spiritual gift the Jews have given to them.
• 15:30-33. Paul realizes he faces enemies in Jerusalem. He asks for the prayers of the Romans that the Jerusalem church will accept his offering. Of course Acts tells us that he gets arrested in Jerusalem.

B. Letter of Recommendation (16:1-27)

• Although most Romans scholars currently think Romans 16 is right where it should be, some have argued that it may have been a separate letter sent to Ephesus from Corinth at the same time as Romans. The reasons are 1) these are a lot of people for Paul to know at a place he's never visited, 2) some of them are associated with Asia or were last known to have been at Ephesus (e.g., Priscilla and Aquila), 3) there are some manuscript issues with the conclusion.
• Romans 16 would especially seem to be a letter of recommendation for Phoebe (16:1-2). We think of how different distance was experienced in a world without phones or email, and how important such commendations were.
• Phoebe was a deacon (diakonos), the leadership role mentioned in various places in the New Testament (e.g., Phil. 1:1). Throughout this chapter, Paul shows that he worked alongside many women in his mission. No hint of the kind of segregation of ministry sometimes advocated today.
• Cenchreae was a port village of Corinth, an indication that Paul is in Corinth as he writes.
• Priscilla and Aquila had been Paul's coworkers originally in Corinth and then in Ephesus. In 2 Timothy 4 they are in Ephesus again. Priscilla is often mentioned first before her husband, a matter of some significance in that world.
• Epaenetus was the first convert in Asia, in Ephesus presumably.
• Andronicus and Junia, a Jewish husband and wife pair, were notable "among the apostles." The wording is a little ambiguous but may suggest that this couple had witnessed the risen Christ and been commissioned by him to proclaim that witness. That would put this man and woman in the same second tier apostleship as Paul and Barnabas. Other translations with a bias against women in ministry (e.g., ESV) render the verse to say that they were well-known to the apostles.
• 16:17-23. A warning against divisions. Interesting that some from Corinth are then mentioned. Is this also a subtle hint to them as well? Paul warns against those who deceive the innocent with flattery and smooth talk. Perhaps false-teachers are already beginning to become a problem in the church.
• 16:23. Gaius seems to provide the central home for the church of Corinth to meet, and that is where Paul is staying as he writes. Erastus is the city's aedile. A paving stone survives at Corinth with his name carved in it, stating that he paid for it.
• 16:22. Tertius is the name of the scribe or amanuensis who wrote Romans down.
• 16:21 Timothy is with Paul, as we would have thought from 2 Corinthians.
• 16:20 is an allusion to Genesis 3:15, an indication that Paul thought of the serpent in the Garden as Satan.
• There is some variety in the endings of Romans among the manuscripts. The verses, 16:25-27, are actually located at the end of Romans 14 in most Greek manuscripts, which of course are medieval. There was thus another ending in some manuscripts, 16:24. 
• This raises the question of whether this ending doxology was part of the original Romans or whether it was originally located elsewhere. The oldest manuscript of Paul has it at the end of chapter 15, which fits with the hypothesis that chapter 16 was originally a separate letter to Ephesus.
• To God be glory forevermore!

____________________________________
I. Introduction
1. Romans 1:1-15

II.1 Who is Justified?
II.1.1 Humanity's Problem
2. Romans 1:16-17
3. Romans 1:18-32
4. Romans 2:1-3:20

II.1.2 God's Solution
5. Romans 3:21-31
6. Romans 4:1-5:11

II.2 What about Sin?
7. Romans 5:12-6:23
8. Romans 7:1-8:39

II.3 What about Israel?
9. Romans 9-11

III. Transformed Minds
10. Romans 12-13
11. Romans 14:1-15:13

I was happy to see at least that the NIV 2011 got its head out of the sand and translated Romans 16:1 with the word "deacon."  The wimpy NIV 1984 as usual wore its Calvino-evangelical theology on its sleeve and translated her as a "servant" of the church at Cenchrea.  We all know this is bias.  If it had been a guy, there's little question they would have identified her as a deacon in the first place.