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The Alisa Childers Podcast
#391 Busting the Biggest Myths About Complementarianism | Denny Burk
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- [00:00]
Denny Burke
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Alisa Childers
That's it.
- [00:18]
Denny Burke
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Alisa Childers
of $45 for three months, $90 for six months or $180 for a 12 month plan required $15 per month equivalent taxes and fees Extra initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes. Me slow when network is busy. See Terms Foreign. What are the biblical parameters for women in ministry? Is it wrong for a woman to have a podcast? Is it wrong for a woman to preach a sermon if she's doing so under the authority of the male church elders in the first century church was Phoebe, a female preacher who exposited Paul's letters At his request was Junia, a female apostle. We're talking about all of it today in this episode brought to you by We Heart Nutrition. This is a Christian owned Pro Life supplement company. You can go to weheartnutrition.com and use my code ALISA for 20% off your first order. So today's guest is Denny Burke, the author of a new book called Mere Male and Female in the Image of God. I wanted to have this conversation with Denny because he is a perfect person to talk about all of these topics with. He's the professor of Biblical Studies at Boyce College and he serves as the associate pastor at Kenwood Baptist Church and is president of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. So in today's episode, we are going to talk about common questions that surround the egalitarian complementarian debate, how what the Bible says works itself out in the practical. Which is kind of a complicated question like, is it okay for a woman to have a podcast? Is it okay for a woman to go on a church sanctioned podcast? Is it okay for a woman to go on a church sanctioned podcast whose intended goal is to exposit the Sunday sermon? I mean, it gets complicated, but we're gonna talk about the recent controversy also over Al Mohler's proposed amendment for the SBC to tighten up their stance on women preaching in Sunday services? We're getting into all the things, so I'll take you now to Denny Burke. Well, Denny Burke, always a pleasure to have you on the show. You've got a new book that is just coming out in a couple of days. I really wanna encourage everybody to check that out. You can pre order it now. Coming out in just a couple of days. And it mere complementarianism. And this is such an important topic right now because I don't know if you've noticed this, Denny, but things out there in social media land are a little spicy on this topic. It is. I mean, you have people running the gamut from really radical extremes on both sides and everywhere in the middle. And so I love this phrase, mere complementarianism. Talk a little bit about that phrase and why you decided to write this book. Now.
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Denny Burke
Thank you so much. I appreciate you having me on the program. Yeah. So mere complementarianism, obviously I'm riffing off of CS Lewis and maybe that's overdone, but I did it anyway. So let me just say this. Mere complementarianism is not. Let's break this down to the absolute minimum standards that we can find in complementarianism. That's not what it is. What I'm talking about with mere complementarianism is what's the basic doctrinal proposition that is complementarianism? And the reason that I'm writing this book is because on both sides I've seen people distort complementarianism either by saying too little or by saying too much. Meaning they add all of these things that are not essential to the doctrine, or they say less than what is essential to the doctrine. And so what I'm trying to posit is to say, look, here's what the doctrine was when it was originally formulated, and if you're going to hold to the basic teaching, here it is, okay? And so, and my thesis is, is that the word complementarianism, which is an eight syllable word, okay? It's not the most, you know, handy word, but the word complementarianism was coined in 1987 to refer to a specific doctrinal proposition called the Danvers statement. And so you can read the words on the statement. And there was no word complementarianism before the Danvers statement. They knew that the men who wrote that statement knew that they needed to come up with men and women needed to come up with a term to refer to it. Because you can't just keep saying all the words of the Danvers statement. And so they labeled their view complementarianism. And so what I'm trying to assert is, look, if you're going to call yourself a complementarian, here's the minimum that you would have to hold to. And sometimes the minimum is a lot more than what people say. And so I'll flesh this out just a little bit. So on one side, you've got some people now who are saying that you can be a complementarian and have female pastors who preach in the church. And I'm saying that's saying way less than what Danvers would allow. And on the other side, you've got people saying no. Complementarianism means that you've got to hold to EFS or a certain view on Bible translation or any number of things that are actually more than what was in Danvers. And so what I'm trying to say is I want everyone to understand what this doctrinal proposition is, because I think it's biblical. I think it still represents the biblical ideal that God created male and female equal in his image. They have equal value and worth. They are equal with respect to the benefits of salvation. A man is no more or less saved than a woman, and vice versa. But they're different, and their differences are important and impact the way that we live in the church, in the home, and anywhere else that you can find men or women. And so that's the basic reason for writing the book and why I'm writing it now.
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Alisa Childers
And you mentioned efs, and that has to do with the controversy, as far as I understand it, of the eternal subordination of the Son. Is that right?
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Denny Burke
That's correct, yeah.
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Alisa Childers
Can you talk a little bit about that for just anybody who's like, wait, what is that? What are we talking about? Cause this is actually a ditch I try really hard not to fall into when I'm talking about this topic, because it would be easy to kind of inadvertently, without realizing it, affirming one or other side of that debate when it's related to the complementarian debate. So maybe just flesh that out for us a little bit.
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Denny Burke
Yeah. The eternal functional subordination of the sun. EFS is sometimes what it's referred to. Ten years ago this summer, it exploded as a controversy within evangelicalism and in particular within complementarianism. And the reason is because of. I think it really all stems back to Paul's statement in 1 Corinthians 11:3, where he says that Christ is the head of man, man is the head of woman, and then God is the head of Christ. And so what do you have there? You've got these headship relationships laid out, and there's three of them. Christ heading the husband, the husband heading the wife, and then God heading Christ. And so that raises the trinitarian question, what does it mean for God to be the head of Christ. And so, I don't know, probably starting back in the 1970s, maybe 1980s, maybe with a guy named George Knight, who was a pca, a very prominent PCA commentator, Bible scholar, you started to see people start speculating on what this headship of God over Christ might be. And one view that came out of that is what we now call eternal functional subordination of the Son, that in some sense, in eternity past, the Son submits to the Father, and that's an analog to the way that a wife submits to her husband. Now the biblical words are there, but the theological implications and way of articulating that became very controversial. And so that's what EFS is. Now you say, well, why are we talking about that? Well, because over the next couple of decades, it got carried out, that teaching got pressed, I think, too far into classical trinitarianism and is not actually consistent with classical trinitarianism. And that all, I think, really got sussed out during that EFS debate back in 2016. Okay, so how does that relate to this discussion? Well, Paul connects that relationship of God in Christ to husband and wife, and in. And you've had several writers. Well, several is not enough. A lot of people, But I can name several off the top of my head. Rachel Green Miller, who wrote a book that was sort of anti complementarianism several years ago. Amy Byrd also wrote a book. They both have cited EFS as reasons not to believe in complementarianism. There's another guy named. Oh, gosh, I'm losing my mind. He wrote a whole book arguing that if you're going to hold to complementarianism, you have to affirm efs. And so one of the reasons I'm writing this book is to say that's not a part of the doctrinal core of complementarianism. Have there been complementarians who have held efs? Yes, there have. Is that any part of the Danvers statement? Any part of the original doctrinal proposition? No. So you can huff and puff and blow that house in all that you want if you demolish efs. Great. You haven't laid a finger on complementarianism yet because it's not essential to the complementarian view at all. And from the very beginning, there have been people who've agreed with that and who've disagreed with that, and it doesn't make them more or less complementarian. The complementarianism is founded on some specifical, some specific biblical texts that talk about what a male and a female are, and it's not rooted in a view of the trinity as such.
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Alisa Childers
I want to take a moment to tell you about a supplement company that I genuinely love. They're called We Heart Nutrition, which is a family owned company that creates research backed, highly bioavailable supplements that don't have things like unnecessary fillers, artificial ingredients. They don't use shortcuts. But what really sets them apart and why I love to partner with them is that they donate 10% of every single sale to pregnancy resource centers all across the US Raising over a million dollars, which is absolutely amazing. I take their multivitamin for women over 40 every day. I take their magnesium glycinate every single night. I use their Omega supplement, which I love is third party tested for purity. Sometimes with those Omega supplements there can be hidden metals that can make their way in. And if the company doesn't do a third party testing to make sure that it' pure, you don't really know what you're getting. But that's why I love We Heart Nutrition because they take the quality that seriously. They don't use any of the fillers and things that can be found in magnesium glycinate supplements, which I love to take before bed. So if you're unsure where to start with them, go to weheartnutrition.com and you can take a 30 second quiz that will give you personalized supplement picks that are based on your life stage, which they have something for everybody. Men, women, pre menopause, prenatal, you name it, they have got something that you can definitely use. So go to weheartnutrition.com, take the quiz and use the code ALISA for 20% off your first order. Again, that's weheartnutrition.com use my code ALISA. Well, recently Al Mohler came into a lot of controversy with an amendment he was proposing at the SBC to. And this is my understanding of it, which I had not only zero problem with, I'm all for, but it was an amendment because SBC already has this idea of women can't be pastors. But then there were apparently a lot of churches that were using women in pastoral roles just not calling them pastors. So they were functionally pastors, but they just weren't called pastors. So the amendment was to, you know, to specifically. I think where it landed was specifically address women preaching in the Sunday service or something along those lines. And I was actually really grateful for this, but it just made the Internet lose its mind and caused this whole conversation to come into the forefront Once again. And I think this might be a good time to talk about the fact that when you have complementarianism, it's naturally, in my view, gonna exist, at least in application on a spectrum. So you have like your hard versus soft complementarians. And then you kind of flesh it out in your book in a way that I hadn't necessarily seen before. You have soft, thin, narrow, hard, thick and broad complementarianism. And then I've observed on X this even further extreme on the complementarian. Well, I wouldn't even call it complementarianism. Cause I don't think it is. But it's like this hyper biblical patriarchy where there was a just controversy erupted about a year ago when Ali Beth Stuckey and I and a few others did the shared the Arrows conference, which was a women's conference. And apparently, like I wrote on X, I was today years old when I learned that there are people that have a problem with women teaching other women, like in public or even speaking in public. So you have this really extreme kind of spectrum. And in this world, can you flesh some of that out for us? Like what is the difference between maybe a hard complementarian versus a soft complementarian? And then how you parse it even further with the soft, thin, narrow and hard, thick and broad.
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Denny Burke
Yeah, so in the book I do talk about those two different categories. A hard versus soft, narrow versus broad, thin versus thick. I mean, they're various ways that people refer to the differences of application with complementarians. But I think the basic distinction that you see is a difference between those who root male and female difference not just in specific commands of Scripture, all sides do that, but also in nature. In other words, in God's design for how he created male and female. And. And so there are some people who we would call soft complementarians who are just looking at a handful of texts in the Bible and they see that there's these restrictions on women teaching and on. They're called to submit to their husbands. And they're looking at these handful of texts and they're trying to figure out what's the minimum we have to do to obey these texts. And if you can talk your way into making. I don't allow them to teach or exercise authority over man. If you can talk your way into somehow allowing a woman to teach and exercise authority over man, we're going to do that in whatever context we can. That's kind of what the soft complementarian impulse is. The more thick complementarian view is one that says, you know, we need to recognize these aren't just isolated commands in Scripture, the scriptural commands are actually fitting with the way God has designed us as male and female. There are differences of. Of calling that are based on our natural design as male and female. And when you see that, you realize, wait a minute, this has implications beyond the mere statements of Scripture. It has implications for everywhere that you can find a man and a woman. Now, there are some people who I think, take what I just said too far and say they speak as if all men are the authority or the heads of all women. Sometimes I think some of the biblical patriarchy people sound that way. And what complementarianism says is that, no, the husband is the head of the wife, which means your husband is not the head of my wife, and vice versa. So I have that unique relationship with my wife. If my wife were to treat another man as her head, that'd be actually deeply unfaithful to the marriage covenant. Right. So we don't. Complementarianism, even in its hardest form, should never be saying that all men are the heads of all women. You see what I'm getting at here?
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Alisa Childers
Yeah, absolutely.
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Denny Burke
However, we do recognize that men, all men are different than all women. And we have a certain design that. So men, I do believe in marriage, are called to be leaders and protectors and providers. I think that's what the scriptural data indicates. Okay. It doesn't just tell them to be that God designed them to be that, which means it's built into their DNA to be that. And so it's not an accident in the history of the world that when you look at most world leaders and most civilizations, who have they been led by? Men. Right. I mean, in other words, it's just written into design. That doesn't mean there's not exceptions here and there, but that's just the way that it is. The world is not naturally a matriarchy. It's just not going to be that. It's going to be. It kind of operates according to God's design. And that's not just in Christian civilizations. That's in every civilization. So some of your hardcore patriarchalists will say, well, that creates a norm. That means that women have a very small space. They can't speak about the Bible, they can't teach about the Bible, even if they're teaching other women that they're somehow usurping pastoral authority. In which I would want to say, have you read Titus 2, where it says for the older women to teach the younger women, to teach them actually how to be women is what it's saying there in Titus 2. And so sometimes I think some of the biblical patriarchy emphases are way are going further than what the Scripture would indicate. I think some of the times the soft complementarians, though, are going way less than what the Scripture would indicate because they're not rooting these scriptural commands in nature. Sometimes they don't see a reason for recognizing male, female difference out in the wider society beyond the home and the church. And so that becomes problematic as well, because then now what are you going to say about transgender identities? In other words, if men and women are basically the same, they just have a couple of different assignments, but they have the same aptitudes in terms of the way that they were designed? Well, then, yeah, I mean, men and women are basically interchangeable. And you lose the scriptural and natural revelation bulwark against some of the modern ideologies that are beating up against what the Bible teaches about male and female. So you have errors on both sides here. Mere complementarianism is not trying to say, let's just split the middle, let's take the Aristotelian mean, and that's always going to be the best thing. No, we're saying that God's revelation is a thoroughgoing revelation and that the differences between male and female are rooted in nature. It does have implications for all of life. We just want to make sure that we're following what Scripture says as we understand how that's applied and how that fleshes out.
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Alisa Childers
Yeah, and I think the application of it is probably the hardest. I don't know how much of Mike Winger's multiple hour series on this topic you caught, but at the end he basically said that the hardest thing about it. It's much easier to determine what the scripture says about this. The much harder question is the application. And I think that's where things can tend to get a bit muddy. I've tried to be very intentional about how I approach this question. Mike and I both are, and we've talked with our pastors and others as well. And you know, there's accountability there, but it doesn't matter kind of where you land. People are still going to say that, you know, you're doing something wrong. I can't tweet something on X without somebody coming in saying, I do not permit a woman to teach. And you're like, well, just. This is just social media. You know, it's like, obviously we can say words in certain contexts. And then. Yet then what I do see, though, is on the more soft, complementarian side, that You've sort of described well, and this is one I think we see quite a lot, is where you'll have a woman that will get up to preach the sermon on a Sunday morning, but they'll say, well, she's doing this under the authority of her husband and the pastor. And I'm like, yeah, that kind of seems like you're just sidestepping what the scripture is saying there. So I know that application can be really hard, but one of the things that Al Mohler took so much heat from in the past couple of weeks is just in the sort of context of this whole controversy. He answered a question about a podcast. And it was the context was, hey, if the church has an official podcast where they are basically taking questions about the Sunday sermon and they're expounding and expositing the Word of God for that local congregation, and that's the context for the podcast, it wouldn't be appropriate for a woman to do that. And I heartily agreed with that, which had tons of people in my comments saying, oh, you're such a hypocrite because you have a podcast. And it's like, it doesn't matter how many times you explain. Like, well, we're talking about a very particular context. If my pastor came to me and said, hey, Elisa, on Mondays we're going to be doing this church sanctioned podcast for our congregation where we're going to be taking questions about the sermon. People just need help with the application of it. They need help with the exposition. And would you, would you join us and help answer those questions? First of all, I would decline, but I even went so far as to post on X that that would actually make me reconsider the church that I attend. And a lot of people just couldn't really understand this because I have a podcast or because I'm vocal on social media. And I guess the question I'm getting to is, do you agree that the application is more maybe muddy and difficult than actually determining it? Like, here's what Paul meant when he said this. But like, how does this apply in certain contexts? Because even if you look at Paul, he allowed women to prophesy with their heads covered. So women were speaking in certain contexts. But I love the way you put it though. It's like you don't want to be on the side of just seeing what you can get away with. That's why I think trajectory is really important. And when I'm considering this question, I'm always thinking, not what can I get away with? How far can I Take this. But I would rather err on the side of being careful than trying to see what, you know, how far I can take this with semantics of, oh, I'm doing it under this covering or that covering. So I don't know. Do you have thoughts on that? 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- [24:47]
Denny Burke
Yeah. So the application is always going to be muddy, where people find the interpretation to be muddy. In other words, if you haven't correctly interpreted what the scripture is saying, you're not going to apply it in the right way. And the other thing that people do is sometimes they don't have all the facts of the situation correct and therefore they have a bad application. So let me speak to both of those things. Specifically, with respect to the controversy you just mentioned with Dr. Mohler, the facts of the case were so widely misreported there was no way anybody was going to get it right. But I can't tell you how many times I've heard people repeat a basically bearing false witness about what he said. It's been repeated over and over that he said a woman can't talk on a podcast.
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Alisa Childers
Right?
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Denny Burke
That's not what he said.
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Alisa Childers
No, it's not.
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Denny Burke
That's not what he said. If you listen to the show, he received a question from a listener about a woman and that he only was responding to the way the question was put to him and how else can he respond to it? The questioner said the woman was basically expounding the scripture. She was just doing it to their church, but doing it on a podcast. Now, if the person had said, can a woman talk about the sermon with some guys on a podcast afterward? I don't think that would have been a big deal. The questioner said she's explicitly been assigned to expound scripture to the congregation. Just doing it through a podcast. I hope every complementarian would say, yeah, women shouldn't be doing that. It would violate 1st Timothy 2:12. I don't allow women to teach, exercise authority over a man. So you have to get the facts straight. If you don't have the facts of the situation straight, you're never going to apply it correctly. But then the other thing is you got to have the doctrine straight. You have to have the interpretation straight. And when you're looking at a text like first Timothy, it says, I don't allow a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man. That verse is commonly misunderstood to mean that a woman can't give information to a man.
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Alisa Childers
Right.
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Denny Burke
In other words, that's not what it's talking about. When Paul uses the word teach, he means something like what we mean when we say the word preach. And I say that because if you look through Paul's use of the word teach, todasco and its cognates throughout the pastoral epistles, teaching is something that always is done with exhortation, rebuke, correction. In other words, teaching is not data download, merely teaching is authoritative instruction. Where I'm a pastor at my church, I preach regularly. And so when I stand up there, I'm not just doing a data download. What I'm doing is I'm explaining the meaning of God's revelation, and then I'm commanding people to do it. Right? The authority is rooted in the word of God, but what am I doing? I'm telling people what to do. And so whenever a person stands before the people of God and is teaching in that sense what you and I would call preaching, they're doing something that's inherently authoritative. And if you're doing that standing behind a pulpit in front of the church, or if you're doing it behind a microphone in a podcast, it's the same activity. Right. And so you would want to, if you're a woman, you would want to avoid that. You don't want to teach or exercise authority over a man in that way. But a lot of people are not interpreting that text correctly. I know it's a hotly disputed text, but you've got to have the interpretation correct before you can have the application correct.
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Alisa Childers
And what about conferences? One of the things that I've said in the past, and it's fine if you disagree with me, but it seems to me, and just with the pastors that I've talked to and with my husband, that when Paul is kind of zeroing in there on authority, the church gathering has a very specific authoritative context that maybe, for example, a conference might not. And so that's why at this time, and I'm always open to changing my position on this, but that's why at this time I'm open to speaking at. And I wouldn't do every conference. I mean, there could be a conference that would be more under that authoritative context of a church, but just like an apologetics conference where it's a community wide event, sometimes they're just using a church as the meeting place. Or I've even spoken at conferences where it might meet at a different kind of venue that's a secular venue. Where do you see that, you know, the application happening there? Would you say it's okay or even good and biblical for a woman to be able to share apologetics information or a testimony at a conference, maybe, if it's not under the authority of a local church gathering.
- [29:33]
Denny Burke
Yeah. So the complementarian view on this is not so much the venue as much as it is what you're doing. So when Paul says teach or exercise authority, I think he's prohibiting two things there. This is one of the big interpretive disputes about this verse. Is he prohibiting two things or one thing? Is he prohibiting teaching with authority? That's one interpretation. I think it's the wrong interpretation. That's the Kathy Keller interpretation that she wrote in her book, what was it, Jesus, justice and Gender, Craig Blumberg. And that view says that the prohibition is a woman can't teach with authority means she can't teach as an elder. So as long as she doesn't hold the office of elder. She can teach and preach all she wants to men and women. She just can't do it as an elder. So whatever you would let an unordained man can do in a church setting, you could let an unordained woman do. I think that's the wrong interpretation of that. I think he is prohibiting two things, not one thing. It's a teaching and exercising authority, both of which are functions of the elder role. And so you would not want to take up that function in any context, in my view, where you would be teaching men. And what I said about teaching was, is it's not just a data download. It's where you're explaining the Bible and you're commanding people to obey the Bible or admonishing them for not obeying the Bible. That's what's going on in this teaching role. And so whenever somebody says, can I speak at a conference? I'm not saying, oh, are there going to be men there? My question is, what are you going to be doing? That's my question is, are you going to be opening up God's word and commanding men to obey the Bible? Is that what you're going to be doing? If that's what you're doing, that's what we would. I think Paul's prohibiting there. In 1 Timothy 2:12, if you're standing up and you're asked to give a lecture on apologetics or you're asked to give a testimony or something like this, that to me is a different activity than what Paul is prohibiting. In 1 Timothy 2, some people would point to 1 Corinthians 14 and says, Let the women keep silent in the churches. They're not permitted to speak. Again, your application is going to be completely dependent upon what you think he's talking about there. And the view that I advocate for in the book is a long held view that Paul is specifically addressing the judgment of prophecies within a church. He has just said the spirits of prophets are subject to to prophets, meaning that when these prophets were standing up and prophesying, you had to have your prophecies judged by other competent leaders within the church that were right there. Which means they could say your teaching is in or out. This is a true or a false prophecy based on what these other prophets were saying and you had to submit to them. And so Paul is saying, well, what happens when you got the first century? I'm a cessationist. I don't know where you were on this. It's neither here nor there, but in the first century, we all agree they had prophecy going on in the church. And what was going on? Well, men and women were prophesying Acts 2. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Well, that creates a situation where the spirits of prophets are subject to prophets. What happens if a man and a woman are both in the assembly and both of them are prophets and the man prophesies, is he now supposed to submit because the spirit of prophets are subject to prophecy? Does the man submit to his wife when he comes to church, but then he's ahead of his wife when he's at home? Paul, he's trying to say, no, that's not how this is going to work. Yes, there will be women prophesying. However, if a woman has a question, she needs to talk to her husband about it at home. She's not going to assume the role of one of the judges of the prophecies. And so I think that that whole text is about the judgment of prophecies. Now, I've just given you an interpretation right now that's going to affect the way you apply that. Right. It's not talking about a woman can't open up her mouth in the assembly. Otherwise, Paul's contradicting 1 Corinthians 11, where he's instructing the women how to pray and prophesy in a way that honors male headship. He's assuming that they're using their speech within the assembly. And so you have to have the right interpretation. And I don't think that the right interpretation is that women can't open their mouths in the assembly or like, you know, sing, for example, or pray. I don't think that that's what. What that is teaching there. Now, what I just said is going to trigger all the biblical patriarchy people.
- [34:09]
Alisa Childers
Yeah.
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Denny Burke
They think that a woman shouldn't have any voice in.
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Alisa Childers
Not even on social media, apparently. That's so kind of funny to me. Yeah.
- [34:20]
Denny Burke
You know, and be and beyond. And so any kind of a data download from a woman tends. Can't. Can't. That they tend to react against in a way. And which I think goes beyond what the scripture is saying.
- [34:34]
Alisa Childers
Well, that's really, really helpful. And I just want to bring up one pushback that I often hear from the egalitarian side, especially on this topic. And it's sort of. I remember first reading about this in one of Rachel Held Evans books where she was making the case that phoebe in Romans 16:1 and 2 is actually preaching the sermon. And so let me just go to that passage, because I've seen this get new life on social media lately just on TikTok. It's so interesting. I don't know if you've noticed this. You've been in this game for a long time. You've been, you know, refuting people like the Jen Hatmakers and the Rachel Halt Evanses for decades now, it seems. That's when I first found you was you were one of the first people that was actually pushing back on Jen Hatmaker and some of these people long before anybody else was. So I know I've mentioned that before on the podcast, so I commend you for that because you were super helpful to me when I was trying to sort these things out. Sarah Bessie was really popular. I'm like, why is nobody addressing these women? And then here's Denny Burke over on your blog. You were constantly doing that. I was so thankful for that. So I remember reading about this in one of Rachel Held Evans books, but I'm seeing it on just my YouTube feed constantly now. Just short videos made from either deconstructionists or egalitarians, which are not always the same thing. So people don't come into my comments saying that I said those are the same thing. I know they're not the same thing. But it comes from Romans 16:1 and 2, where Paul says, I commend to you our sister Phoebe, who is a servant of the church, which is at Chantrea Centria, that you receive her in the Lord in a manner worthy of the saints, and that you help her in whatever matter she may have need of you. For she herself has also been a helper of many and of myself as well. And so what often is said from the egalitarian side is that Phoebe was a church leader, that she was respected in an authoritative manner. In fact, Paul sent her with this letter, which would have. And usually what you can see in the wording of the scholars is words like probably. So they're making assumptions, but probably means she was expounding on it. She was answering questions about it, she was helping with application and exposition and all of that stuff. So I would love to know your thoughts about Phoebe, it seems to me, and then I'll throw it over to you, that you have this one kind of. And when I say obscure, I mean in the sense that this is sort of a passage of scripture that's a bit unclear because you have this whole testimony of Scripture from Genesis, which I agree with you, by the way. When people ask me about Paul's commands, I go all the way back to Genesis. I'm like, before I even talk to you about that, let's talk about the creation mandate, because that's where this begins for me. But they'll bring up Paul and this kind of obscure passage where he's talking about this woman Phoebe. And they're, I think, importing a bunch of assumptions into this about what that meant in that context and then using that as a normative principle to apply to church life today. So talk about Phoebe. Who was Phoebe? And is it justifiable to say, like, she was this church leader that was essentially functioning as a pastor in that sense? Maybe you have an event coming up, it's a birthday, it's an anniversary. But you want to get the perfect gift for the perfect person. Let me recommend to you Range Leather. This is a Christian owned company where every product they craft in their Laramie, Wyoming workshop is built to last a lifetime, just like the values they hold dear. I love my Range Leather clutch, which has a little strap I can put on my wrist and just carry it into a store. But if I want to carry, carry more stuff, like in summer when I've got my sunscreens and just more stuff. I love my Range Leather tote. It's nice and roomy. It fits my laptop, my wallet, little makeup bag, tons of stuff that I can carry in it. But the quality is so good. This thing is sturdy, right? This is not rickety. This is built to last a lifetime. It wears in, not out. But maybe you're not ready to invest in a nice bag like that. They have lots of other smaller options like jewelry, full grain, horween leather, apple watch bands. You know, in the summer you might be wanting to protect your head more from the sun. They've got cute trucker hats with leather patches. So many things that they craft by skilled crafters who take pride in creating products that wear in and not out. Give them a try today. Go to rangeleather.com, use my code ALISA for 15% off. Again, that's rangeleather.com, use My Code Alisa.
- [38:58]
Denny Burke
Never has more been made of so little than what the egalitarians make of Phoebe. The claims that they have made about Phoebe, that she's the first expositor of Romans, the first preacher. She was there instructing all of the house churches in Rome. Nijay Gupta says that she was an ad hoc apostle. He even gives her some sort of quasi apostolic authority coming there. And yet when you read the verse, it says, I commend you, Phoebe, our sister who's a servant of the church, which is in Cenchria, that you receive her in the Lord in a manner worthy of the saints, and that you help her in whatever matter she may have need of you, for she herself has been a helper of many and of myself as well. Now you say, how are they getting all that out of this? Because guess what? These are the only two verses. These are the only. Only thing we know about Phoebe is what is in these two verses. There's nothing else anywhere else in the record, biblical record, or elsewhere about Phoebe. And yet she's an ad hoc apostle. She's preaching in the house, churches, she's doing all these things. What's going on there? Well, what they're doing is that they're interpreting a couple of key terms in an incorrect way, and they're also reading a certain construal of the historical background into the text. They're not getting it out of the text because it's not there, but they're reading it into the text, which is a common exegetical fallacy that people make when they read the Bible. So they're looking at that word servant, which is the word diakonos, and it's also the word that sometimes a handful of verses is translated as deacon. And they're saying that she must have held the official office of deacon. And then they're saying that that office is an authoritative office, which involved teaching and preaching. So that's the first thing they're saying. I think that's wrong. I think it's a misconstrual of the office of deacon. Look at 1 Timothy 3, that one of the differences of the qualifications for deacon from that of the elder is that the elder has to be apt to teach, and the deacons are not the main. Now, do I think deacons teach? Yeah, I think they often do. But there's a whole question about whether or not they're female deacons. But wherever you land on that, it's not clear at all that this was the teaching office of the church. That's not what that office is all about. So I think they're misconstruing what a deacon is there. But then also there's this word here that in my translation is rendered as helper. She herself has been a helper of many. It's this Greek word, prostasis, and they are interpreting that word to mean leader. And there's a whole reason that they do that, because there's a masculine form of this word that you can find in extra Biblical literature where it does refer to certain leaders. The question though is we have a different word here and it's a feminine word and it's prostatis, the feminine form. Does it mean that when it's a female? And so I've written an article recently where I argued, no, it actually doesn't mean that. The evidence isn't towards that at all. It means something like helper. It could be something like benefactor. In other words, that she was a contributor to Paul's ministry, which is not different from what, what was happening in Jesus ministry. He had women attached to his ministry who were benefactors. They were actually contributing financially to the furtherance of the ministry. It sounds like that's what Phoebe was. So nobody should be casting any shade on Phoebe. Phoebe was obviously being commended by Paul. She's been a faithful servant of the church. I don't think she's an official office holder, a deacon. The word diaconus is usually used to refer just to servants in general. I think that's what's going on here. But she was a faithful Christian woman who was supporting Paul's ministry and that's all. And all this stuff about her preaching to the churches is read in. There's some assumptions about the background that in the first century the letter carriers were expected to interpret the letters to the people that they brought them to. And so from that people have said, therefore Phoebe must have done that and she must have been standing before the churches and preaching. That's a leap. All right, so if my wife writes me a note and my child brings it to me and I ask my child for, hey, could you clarify what mom was doing when she said this? My child is not in authority over me at that moment and my child is not the preacher of that letter at that moment. In other words, a couple of follow up clarifying questions is not the same thing as being the preacher of Romans. It's not the same thing, but they've turned it into that. And also there's a question about whether this was the normal role of every letter carrier. I don't think that it was. And so they've read all of this extra stuff that's not in the text into the text and then said, and then now they're treating it as if there's an exegetical basis for a woman being a leader and a preacher and it's just not there. It's just not.
- [44:27]
Alisa Childers
This is interesting because one of the things that is often just stated as fact is what you've just said, that when A letter was given to someone to bring to a particular place. Like it carried with it the assumption that that person was going to be having this authoritative position to exegete the letter and to interpret the letter and all of that. Where are they getting that? Is that. Do you know where that comes from? Because when you hear these arguments put forth, it's just like, oh, yeah, everybody knows this in the ancient world. This is how it worked. But where are they getting that from? Do you know where that started? Or who kind of said, yeah, this is how it's done?
- [45:05]
Denny Burke
So I think it's kind of a distortion of something that's real. So you can look at first century letters like we have. There's a documentary trail of first century letters. And sometimes the letter writers will say things about the letter carrier and what they're expecting the letter carrier to do once the letter carrier delivers the letter. And sometimes they'll say, he'll explain to you some more details about my situation when he gets there. And so you do have evidence in extra biblical literature, other letters, that letter carriers brought information also themselves that wasn't included in the letter. You can see that in, in some of the, in biblical texts, like in Philippians, when it talks about Philippians and Colossians, when it talks about those letter carriers, he'll tell you about my situation when he gets there. Paul says, and so there is indication that sometimes the letter carriers were expected to communicate some information. Okay, that's fine. That doesn't mean that whoever the letter carrier is is now an ad hoc apostle who's the authoritative proclaimer of this letter and explaining the meaning of this letter and telling you how you have to obey it. That's not what that means. Any more than if your child brings you a message from your spouse that your child is now the authoritative expositor and authority. That's not what that is. And that's why I say, never has more been made of so little than what egalitarians make of phoebe in Romans 16:1 too, because they're reading a lot of stuff into this. It's just not there. Sure, in some cases, letter carriers may have answered some clarifying questions. Okay, that doesn't mean that they were the preacher of that thing. So there's some true observations about letter carriers that are out there, but they're extrapolating these unbelievable assertions about letter carriers from that. And it's just. It's really, really thin. And honestly, a lot of your honest egalitarians will recognize that. I think there's a lot of tendentious modes of argument on that side when it comes to this particular issue. Most egalitarians, I think, careful egalitarians, don't build their case on this. It's a house of cards.
- [47:25]
Alisa Childers
And I mean not to get in the weeds, because we have more that I want to cover in this episode. But you mentioned never has more been made of such a small thing. Maybe the one thing that's been made more of is Junia. So Junia is like there's this whole movement surrounding this person that's listed in Romans 16:7 named Junia. And the claim is that this is a female apostle and therefore church leaders and all of this can be female. And it's Romans. I don't want to get too deep in the weeds on this, but I'd love to just get a few comments from you on this because to me, this is just puzzling. It's puzzling that you would build an entire worldview practically, or entire movement around this verse that's actually quite difficult to make out. I've read lots of scholars on this, and it's Romans 16:7. Greet Andronicus and Junia, my fellow Jews who have been in prison with me. They are outstanding among the apostles, and they were in Christ before I was. Now this verse has turned into a massive movement. There are websites, there are not just like an article here and there like, hey, this could have been a female apostle. That's interesting. No, it's like a complete worldview is built upon this, when two things would have to be assumed. Number one, that Junia is even female. Right. It's just a name that could have been male or female, you know, leans toward maybe being female, as far as I understand it. But then, even if it is a female, even if you grant that it is a female, it says they are outstanding among the apostles. That word among there. I've read Dan Wallace on this and others where it's a little ambiguous there. It's not necessarily saying they were among the apostles, as in they were one of the apostles, but they were outstanding among the apostles. It could also, and probably likely means they were outstanding, you know, among the apostles. The apostles found them to be outstanding among them, you know, not like they were one of them, if that makes any sense, what I just said. So those two things would have to be imported and assumed for this to actually be a female apostle. But this is just rampant. Again, like, I even feel like more is made of this than even Phoebe, perhaps in the egalitarian world do you have thoughts on Junia?
- [49:36]
Denny Burke
Yeah, I think the phrase there is in tois apostolos, if I remember correctly. And it literally is. It's the preposition in which in English is rendered as in I n. But in Greek, it's often when it's followed by a plural expression, it could mean among the people that follow. So she's outstanding among the apostles. So there's a number of different ways that you can take that. I think most likely it is a woman. I don't think you can say that 100%, but I think it most likely is probably a female name. But the question is, what is her relationship to the band of apostles, the band of authoritative revelation receivers that Jesus appointed? And what the egalitarians are trying to say is that she was an apostle. She herself was an apostle. Now, that would be significant because the office of apostle is one of the extraordinary offices of the church. Okay? We have ordinary offices, pastor, deacon. Those are still existing offices. But then you have these extraordinary offices that Paul talks about in Ephesians 4, 11 apostles, prophets, evangelists, okay? And then you get pastor teachers after that, then deacons elsewhere. If a woman can be an apostle, that's the most authoritative office in the church. It's an office that has authority over not just a local church, like a pastor has authority in a local church. An apostle has authority over all the churches of all ages at all times, because Jesus appointed the apostles to be special receptors of his revelation. He said to Peter, upon this rock, I'm going to build my church is going to be upon what you preach, Peter, that we're going to build the church. Paul says in Ephesians 2 that the church is built upon the foundation of the apostles, right? The apostles and the prophets. And so it's the most authoritative office within the church. And if you could say that a woman was an apostle, well, then she could do anything at that point, right? In other words, it's going to be in tension with all these other limitations that you see like in 1 Timothy 2, 1 Corinthians 11, 1 Corinthians 14. And so they're very keen on finding her to be an apostle. They want her to be an apostle really bad. And so the way that they've interpreted this is that she just was. Because, look, she's outstanding among the apostles. The problem is that that phrase doesn't always mean that the person that you're talking about is a part of that group. So if I say, You know, my whole family loves your podcast, Alyssa. You are outstanding to us. I do not mean that you're a part of my family.
- [52:40]
Alisa Childers
Right.
- [52:41]
Denny Burke
When I say that you're outstanding to us, what I mean is that we regard you as exemplary in the way that you do your podcast. I think that's exactly what's going on here. And you mentioned Dan Wallace and Dan Bureau, who wrote the article many years ago, and it was published in New Testament Studies, which is the most prestigious journal that there is, in the New Testament Guild. They wrote that, and it was published there. And they made the case, I think, pretty convincingly, that that's what's going on with this. It's not that she was one of the apostles, but the apostles regarded her as outstanding.
- [53:16]
Alisa Childers
Yeah, very good. I want to talk about hierarchy before the Fall because one of the things that you talk about in your book is that mere complementarianism isn't just rooted in nature. It's from the beginning. We're not talking about something that is a result of the Fall, which I think is one of the issues that really confuses people, because certain people will say, well, you know, before the Fall, everything was completely interchangeable in role. And then you have the Fall. And so really now, yeah, the complementarianism that is being talked about, that's really a result of the Fall. That's because of sin that women have to submit to their husbands. Now, I don't hold that view. I think there was hierarchy before the Fall. I think that is, you know, when you really read what's going on in the Scripture, I don't think it's actually that difficult to get to that. But this does confuse people. So can you talk about what was going on before the fall? And then maybe what we're seeing as a result of the fall, I mean, there's always going to be a corruption of good things because of the Fall. But was there, you know, did Eve submit to Adam? Was there a hierarchy of sorts before sin entered the world?
- [54:29]
Denny Burke
The answer to that question is that there was. So the headship relationship with the husband being the head and the wife being the helper who's coming alongside to assist this authority that God has established that existed before the Fall. One of the key egalitarian claims is that headship, the idea of male authority within marriage and within the home and society elsewhere, all of that is a consequence of sin in the world. And so when sin comes into the world, then you have this hierarchy that enters in. And one of the things that Christ comes to do is to take away the curse of sin, which means Take away the hierarchy. And so that's why. And so the Magna Carta for egalitarianism is Galatians 3:28. We're all one. In Christ, there's neither male nor female. So he removes all the hierarchies. That's the way they interpret that. Well, what they do, though, is they look at Genesis 3, and in verse 16, where it says to the woman, he said, I will multiply your pain in childbirth. In pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you. Now, this is the curse that God puts upon the woman right after the fall. And so egalitarians read that and say, see, it says there, your desire will be for your husband. He shall rule over you. That's where male rule came in as a part of the curse. But Jesus removes the curse. Okay, so there's the egalitarian claim. That claim, unlike the Phoebe issue we were just talking about, this claim about hierarchy being rooted in the Fall, is pretty universal amongst egalitarians. It has to be. Because if you find hierarchy in the original design, then that can't be wrong. Right? In other words, there can't be anything. You know, their argument falls apart at that point. And so what are the indications that you have hierarchy before this curse that occurs in Genesis 3:16? Well, there are a number of things that happen in chapter two, right? So Genesis chapter two is the creation of man and woman. Genesis chapter three is the fall before Genesis three. There's nothing wrong with the world. Everything is good and right. You've got the first marriage, and you've got several indications there that the husband is intended to be the head of the wife number one. You have the order of creation. The man is created first. You say, well, why does that matter? Well, it matters because in the ancient world, primogeniture was a thing. Primogeniture is the word that we use to talk about the firstborn, and that the firstborn has special privileges of leadership and then often of inheritance. Okay, and so an ancient reader reading through Genesis is going to look, oh, Adam came first, and then Eve came. Obviously, Adam is created as the head because he's the firstborn. He's the primogenitor figure. There you say, what's the evidence of that in Scripture? Well, just read through the rest of Genesis and read through the rest of the firstborn passages. Does it matter who the firstborn was? With Jacob and Esau, it does matter who the firstborn was. And did there have to be a special provision for the secondborn to inherit the blessing there did, because the expectation was it always fell on the firstborn. Or think about later on in Genesis, when you think about the 12 sons of Jacob, does it matter who was the firstborn in terms of who was the leader of all the brothers, the 12 tribes of Israel? You remember when they wanted to sell Joseph into slavery, who was the one who stepped forth to rescue his brother? It was Reuben. Reuben is the firstborn. And Reuben understood his father would hold him accountable for Joseph. And so Reuben steps in and keeps them from killing him, and they end up selling him into Egypt. So Reuben is the firstborn. Simeon and Levi are the second born. Reuben ends up sleeping with his father's concubine and disgracing himself. Simeon and Levi have the whole deal with Shechem. They disgrace themselves. And so when you get to the end of the Book of Genesis, it says, not Reuben, not Simeon or Levi are going to be the leader. Who's going to be the leader? It's the fourth son, the scepter shall not depart from Judah. In other words, all that narrative is about how the leadership responsibility devolved from the firstborn to the fourth born. Because the assumption is what leadership belongs to the firstborn. And so all I'm trying to say is if you're reading the text, the original author of the text sees significance in who is firstborn and who comes subsequently. And the assumption is that the firstborn is the one who has the mantle of leadership. Unless something undermines that, and then you have narratives to explain why it got undermined. So primogeniture is a thing. And you see this ratified in the New Testament Testament, because when you look at the apostle Paul, who's now reflecting back and interpreting the Old Testament, and He's interpreting Genesis 2, we've talked about first Timothy 2, I don't allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man. Why? For it was Adam who was formed first and then Eve. So that's the apostle Paul telling you that the order of creation matters in terms of who has the leadership, responsibility. And so we have an apostolic, not just a warrant, but a command to see the significance of the order of creation in Genesis 2, and that it has an entailment of headship that's there. So, you know, egalitarians have to set aside Paul once they've set aside the primogeniture feature that's there in Genesis 2. You also have in Genesis 2, Adam naming everything. So naming is a function of authority in all These texts in the Old Testament. And Adam is naming all the animals, and he even names the woman. He says she's going to be called Ishah because she was taken out of Ish. She's going to be called woman because she's taken from man. So he's naming her, which is also a function of authority. You've also got the fact that she's named after the man, right? So her name Isha comes from Ish, man. Those are the Hebrew terms for man and woman that are used there. And then one other thing I would mention is that. So you've got. In the fall. In the fall, you've got the woman who takes and eats and then offers to her husband, and then he takes and eats, and they both fall into transgression at that. At that point, God comes into the garden, and who does he come looking for? He says to the man, called to the man, where are you singular?
- [61:31]
Alisa Childers
Yeah.
- [61:32]
Denny Burke
Not where are you plural, but where are you singular? Meaning you both have fallen into calamity here. You both fallen into sin. But who am I holding accountable for this? I'm holding you, Adam, accountable for this. Because the truth was, when Eve was eating that fruit at the very beginning, it says she turned to Adam, who was with her. So Adam is standing there passively as the serpent is coming in and subverting his wife and subverting the integrity of the garden. God had told him to guard the garden. And in Genesis chapter 2 and verse 15, he's supposed to cultivate and to keep, which means to guard it. So Adam's already sinning and falling by not keeping and guarding the garden before she even takes a bite. And so once you get to Romans chapter five, that's why it says that everybody. Adam fell first, right? So I view the first sin, the first failure, is a failure of headship in Genesis 3. So all of those things are pointing. So what do you end up having here? So God had initially said, God is supposed to be ruling over the male and the female. The male and the female are supposed to be ruling over the earth, including the beasts of the earth. In Genesis chapter three, the whole thing is turned upside down to where now the beast of the earth, the serpent, is ruling over the woman, who's then ruling over the man. And both of them are now evading God. And so what you have in chapter three is a reversal of the order of creation. So now instead of God at the top, you've got the serpent at the top and then the woman over the man. And so Forth.
- [63:15]
Alisa Childers
Wow.
- [63:16]
Denny Burke
So all of that stuff is in Genesis 2 before you ever get to Genesis 3, where it says, your desire shall be for your husband. He shall rule over you. So then what's the point of Genesis 3 saying, he shall rule over you? It's talking about, now what was supposed to be a happy helper to the husband's headship. How do you like that for alliteration?
- [63:34]
Alisa Childers
That's very good.
- [63:36]
Denny Burke
What was supposed to be this happy situation of a husband lovingly caring for, leading and providing and protecting his wife, and his wife being a happy helper as they both subdue creation and rule over it. That's what was supposed to be happening. Now you've got enmity between the man and the woman. You're going to desire your husband, but he's going to rule over you. And if you compare this to chapter four, where it talks about Cain and Abel and. It says, to Cain, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must master it. Meaning sin wants to master you, but you have to master it. So to say that sin desires you, it means it wants to master you. Same thing here. Your desire shall be for your husband. I think it means you're going to have a desire to master your husband, but he's going to rule over you. And so now instead of assuming the role of helper, you're going to be trying to usurp his role, and now he's going to be ruling harshly over you. Meaning now we've got sin in the world, and you guys are going to be screwing this up from top to bottom, and you're going to have the need for a redeemer, which is promised right there in verse 15. But that's what this is about. This is not about the introduction of headship or authority. This is about the corruption of headship and authority that was already established in chapter two. So it's there in the original creation account. It happens before the fall. It just gets corrupted by the fall.
- [65:09]
Alisa Childers
Yeah, so well put. And when I read Romans 5, where it says, therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man and death through sin, right there the blame is being put on Adam as if he's the one that's being held accountable and responsible, even though Eve was the first one to take the bite. And the other reason the egalitarian arguments fail for me, especially with the first Timothy passage, is that you hear so many arguments within the egalitarian world, and specifically more in the progressive Christian world, which are not the same thing. I realize they're not the same thing, but is that, you know. Well, Paul was just, it was like a cultural thing. But that would only work if Paul gave his reason as being cultural. But his reason that he gave is appealing all the way back to creation and that's what he's rooting it in. So I don't think it's justifiable to say, well, it's just a cultural thing so we can do something different today. This has all been so helpful. We're about out of time, but is there anything that you want to make sure you get to say that we didn't cover or any kind of final thoughts you might have. Have.
- [66:15]
Denny Burke
Well, I just want to thank you for letting me come on here and I do hope that folks will take a look at this book. It's going to be probably controversial to a lot of people, but you know, the, the hope is, is to get people reading their Bibles to see what it actually says about male and female, to see how God has created us gloriously different for his good, for his glory and for our good. And so that's the whole, that's really the hope behind this, is that we just want to have biblical integrity when we conduct our lives because God calls us not as, you know, unisex believers, he calls us as male and female. And that makes a difference in how we live our lives.
- [66:55]
Alisa Childers
Very good. Well, I want to thank my guest, Danny Burke. I want to encourage you to pick up his book Mere Complementarianism. Male and Female in the Image of God comes out in just a couple days. You can go ahead and place your pre order on Amazon and wherever books are sold. And let's remember as we pursue Christ to keep a sharp mind, a soft heart and a thick skin. We'll see you next time. So pray for me and I will pray for you. No turning right or left will make it through
- [67:27]
Denny Burke
the road that's narrow and
- [67:29]
Alisa Childers
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