The Blue Parakeet, 2nd

by Scot McKnight

  2. For a good study, see John Goldingay, “Your Iniquities Have Made a Separation,” in Atonement Today, ed. J. Goldingay (London: SPCK, 1995), 39–53.

  3. Ibid., 53.

  Chapter 13: Justice in the King and His Kingdom Redemption Story

  1. E. T. Sankowski, “Justice,” in The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, 2nd ed., ed. T. Honderich (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 463–64. I am grateful to an email exchange with Ben Davis for helping me to clarify my thoughts in this section.

  2. For full discussion, see C. J. H. Wright, Old Testament Ethics for the People of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 23–99.

  3. Ibid., 254.

  4. I discuss love in A Fellowship of Differents: Showing the World God’s Design for Life Together (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2014), 51–81.

  5. Connecting love with justice has been an intellectual pursuit of Nicholas Wolterstorff, Justice in Love (Grand Rapds: Eerdmans, 2011), though I think he falls short of the Bible’s fuller perspective in defining love as “care.” But he is surely right in connecting love to justice: love that isn’t just isn’t love and justice that isn’t love isn’t justice.

  Part 5: Women in Church Ministries Today

  1. Perhaps the most significant innovation in the history of Christian theology is the addition of the filioque clause to the Nicene Creed. The original Nicene Creed of 325 AD had I believe . . . “in the Holy Spirit.” In 381, that same Article read “I believe in the Holy Spirit the Lord and Giver of life, who proceedeth from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified, who spake by the prophets.” From the sixth century on, however, “who proceedeth from the Father” read “who proceedeth from the Father and the Son.” “And the Son” in Latin is filioque. This became the official Creed in 1014 AD. The churches of the Western world (Catholics, Protestants) have accepted this as the Creed while the churches of the East (Orthodoxy) have not.

  2. For a series of informed, judicious, and long blog posts, posts that deserve to become a book, see those of an Anglican professor of theology, William G. Witt: http://willgwitt.org/theology/a-new-pagea-guide-to-my-essays-on-womens-ordination/.

  3. Scot McKnight, Galatians, NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995), 201–11; Scot McKnight, 1 Peter, NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 180–98.

  Chapter 14: The Bible and Women

  1. This text is normally cited as Tosefta Berakot 7.18, but my edition of the Tosefta has it at Berakot 6.18. I use J. Neusner, The Tosefta, 2 vols. (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2002).

  2. This saying, with variants, can be found in Diogenes Laertius, Vitae Philosophorum 1.33; Plutarch, Marius 46.1; Lactantius, Divine Institutes 3.19.17.

  3. See Dictionary of the Old Testament: Pentateuch, ed. T. Desmond Alexander and D. W. Baker (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 897–904; Dictionary of the Old Testament: Historical Books, ed. B. T. Arnold and H. G. M. Williamson (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2005), 989–99.

  4. Dictionary of the New Testament Background, ed. C. A. Evans and S. E. Porter (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 1276–80.

  5. See Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, ed. J. B. Green, S. McKnight, and I. H. Marshall (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1992), 880–87; I quote from p. 880.

  6. Josephus, Against Apion 2.201.

  7. A brief sketch of this can be found in Sarah Sumner, Men and Women in the Church (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 58–69.

  8. A small sampling, even if not representing the more negative side, can be found in Mark J. Edwards, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, vol. 8: Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1999), 183–90.

  9. See Ruth A. Tucker and Walter Liefeld, Daughters of the Church (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1987).

  10. The best sketch of this I have seen is William Webb, Slaves, Women and Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2001), 22–29, upon which I have relied in this section.

  11. I don’t like the term “egalitarianism” because it smacks too much of an Enlightenment sense of rights and justice and less of the biblical sense of mutuality designed in creation and reestablished in new creation. I believe there is something real in femininity and masculinity that distinguishes women from men, though I cannot define what that might be. I believe “mutuality” encourages a profound unity, equality, and distinctiveness better than the term “egalitarian.” The term “egalitarian” conveys a battle while the term “mutuality” conveys partnership, companionship, and unity.

  12. See Edwards, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, 190 (quoting Chrysostom).

  Chapter 15: What Did Women Do in the Old Testament

  1. For my study of what the Bible says about Mary, see The Real Mary: Why Protestant Christians Can Embrace the Mother of Jesus (Brewster, MA: Paraclete, 2016).

  2. I am deeply aware of the amount and depth of scholarship on the many passages I will mention in what follows, but in this context it is not remotely possible to enter into the many debates. I recommend the following books for your own personal study: R. W. Pierce and R. M. Groothuis, eds., Discovering Biblical Equality: Complementarity without Hierarchy (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2005); A. Mickelsen, ed., Women, Authority and the Bible (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1986); B. Clouse and R. G. Clouse, eds., Women in Ministry: Four Views (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1989); James R. Beck, ed., Two Views on Women in Ministry, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005).

  In addition to those more general surveys, I also recommend Craig S. Keener, Paul, Women, and Wives: Marriage and Women’s Ministry in the Letters of Paul (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004); S. Sumner, Men and Women in the Church (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003); J. Stackhouse, Finally Feminist: A Pragmatic Christian Understanding of Gender (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2005); R. T. France, Women in the Church’s Ministry: A Test Case for Biblical Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995); B. Witherington III, Women in the Ministry of Jesus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987) and Women in the Earliest Churches (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Lynn Cohick, Women in the World of the Earliest Christians: Illuminating Ancient Ways of Life (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009); Lynn H. Cohick and Amy Brown Hughes, Christian Women in the Patristic World: Their Influence, Authority, and Legacy in the Second through Fifth Centuries (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017).

  3. While some think the “fall” is an unbiblical category and not even taught in this passage, I believe “fall” remains a useful category. Something happened in Eden that impacts other humans and also describes the way of humans.

  4. I follow here the interpretation of two leading Old Testament scholars: see Bill Arnold, Genesis, New Cambridge Bible Commentary (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 69–71; Tremper Longman III, Genesis, The Story of God Bible Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2016), 67. Some today think “desire” is not a desire to dominate but simply a romantic desire (as in Song of Songs 7:10); but as Arnold and Longman show, the more immediate parallel to this verb “desire” is a desire to control in Genesis 4:7.

  5. From Peter J. Leithart, 1 and 2 Kings (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2006), 267.

  Chapter 16: What Did Women Do in the New Testament?

  1. See my The Real Mary (Brewster, MA: Paraclete, 2016).

  2. For the sake of completeness, I do not see the same influence in the book of Jude, which tradition claims was written by another son of Mary.

  3. For a fuller discussion of Junia, see Appendix 6.

  4. An exhaustive study by a specialist in textual criticism is E. J. Epp, Junia: The First Woman Apostle (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005); for a brief discussion, Lynn Cohick, Women in the World of Earliest Christianity (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006), 214–17.

  5. Epp, Junia, 32.

  6. Other “co-workers” (
or “fellow workers”) can be found in Romans 16:9, 21; 1 Corinthians 3:9; 2 Corinthians 8:23; Philippians 2:25; 4:2–3; 1 Thessalonians 3:2; Philemon 1, 24.

  7. See 1 Corinthians 3:5–9: “What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. The one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose, and they will each be rewarded according to their own labor. For we are co-workers in God’s service; you are God’s field, God’s building.”

  8. Douglas J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans, New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 914.

  9. An imaginative approach to Romans can be found in Reta Halteman Finger, Roman House Churches for Today (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007).

  10. Robert Jewett, Romans, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), 947–48.

  11. The technical discussion for what I state here can be found in G. H. R. Horsley, New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity (Macquarie, Australia: Macquarie University Press, 1987), 4:239–44.

  Chapter 17: Silencing the Blue Parakeet (1)

  1. For a more technical defense of this, see Susan Foh, “What Is the Woman’s Desire?” Westminster Theological Journal 37 (1974–75): 376–83; but see also the excellent study of Richard S. Hess, “Equality with and without Innocence: Genesis 1–3,” in Discovering Biblical Equality: Complementarity without Hierarchy, ed. R. W. Pierce and R. M. Groothuis (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2005), 79–95.

  2. See Appendix 3 for a special problem with these verses.

  3. C. S. Keener, “Learning in the Assemblies: 1 Corinthians 14:34–35,” in Discovering Biblical Equality, 161–71.

  4. Ibid., 171.

  5. Ibid.

  6. There are basically two views of this passage and, in fact, of women in ministry; one sides with the Restorationist and Roman Catholic views of how we read the Bible and the other sides with the reformed and always reforming view. The former is often called “complementarian” and the latter “egalitarian,” though simple labels mask both the seriousness of the views as well as nuances within and between such views. The term “complementarian” fudges the reality; this view is really a “hierarchical” view, for the focus is on male leadership and female subordination. I am with the reformed and always reforming view, and while I can be labeled an “egalitarian,” I prefer to use other terms for my view of women in ministry. Two technical studies of this passage, the first from the complementarian side and the second from the egalitarian side, are W. D. Mounce, Pastoral Epistles, Word Biblical Commentary (Nashville: Nelson, 2000), 94–149, including eight dense pages of bibliography; and Towner, Letters to Timothy and Titus, 190–239.

  Chapter 18: Silencing the Blue Parakeet (2)

  1. B. P. Reardon, Collected Ancient Greek Novels, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 125.

  2. Juvenal and Perseus, Satires, trans. G. G. Ramsay, LCL (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961), 6.434–44 (p. 119). The English text is also available online at http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Satire_6.

  3. On this, see especially B. W. Winter, Roman Wives, Roman Widows: The Appearance of New Women and the Pauline Communities (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003). Phil Towner, in his excellent commentary on the Pastoral Epistles, has sifted through recent studies on the context at Ephesus and brings them all to bear upon this passage in his extensive, excellent analysis; see Letters to Timothy and Titus, 190–239.

  4. See the discussion in Winter, Roman Wives, Roman Widows, 39–58.

  5. Towner, Letters to Timothy and Titus, 239.

  Appendix 1: A Discernment Quiz

  1. Originally in Leadership Journal.

  Appendix 2: Images of Jesus

  1. North England Institute for Christian Education.

  Appendix 3: 1 Corinthians 14:34–35

  1. See Gordon Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), 699–708; Fee expanded his arguments in his book God’s Empowering Presence (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994), 272–81. These issues are complex and few have taken Fee on at the level of his expertise.

  2. P. B. Payne, “Vaticanus Distigme-obelos Symbols Marking Added Text, Including 1 Corinthians 14.34–5,” New Testament Studies 63 (2017): 604–25.

  3. I believe Fee got this right, but many of my readers will not agree with Fee, so I have pursued this argument in a different direction.

  Appendix 4: Petronius on the New Roman Woman

  1. I use the online edition of Petronius, Satyricon, found at www.igibud.com/petron/satyr/satyr.txt. Another translation of this Latin text can be found at Petronius, Satyricon (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), section 67.

  Appendix 5: Juvenal on First-Century Women

  1. Juvenal and Perseus, Satires, trans. G. G. Ramsay, LCL (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961), 6.434–44 (p. 119). The English text is also available online at http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Satire_6.

  Appendix 6: Junia Is Not Alone

  1. E. J. Epp, Junia: The First Woman Apostle (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005).

  2. He makes this point because some have said “Junias” (a supposed man’s name) is a contraction of Junianus (clearly a man’s name). There is no evidence for such a contraction, and it goes against other examples of contraction.

  3. See Mounce’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006), 26–27.

  4. The use of the term “prophetess” is problematic to me: it tends to diminish the meaning of “prophet” into a female kind of thing instead of the robust sense of “prophet.” I prefer that we speak of a woman prophet as a prophet and not a “prophet-ess.”

  5. See pages 228–29.

  6. See pages 229–35.

  7. See page 235–36.

  8. See pages 238–40.

  9. See pages 243–46 regarding Priscilla and Phoebe.

  10. R. H. Finger, Roman House Churches for Today: A Practical Guide for Small Groups (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007).

  11. Epp, Junia, 38.

  12. See also R. R. Schulz, “Twentieth-Century Corruption of Scripture,” Expository Times 119.6 (2008).

  13. B. J. Brooten, “ ‘Junia . . . Outstanding among the Apostles’ (Romans 16:7),” in Women Priests: A Catholic Commentary on the Vatican Declaration, ed. L. Swidler and A. Swidler (New York: Paulist, 1977), 142.

  14. Epp, Junia, 57, italics added.

  15. Ibid., 32 (In ep. ad Romanos 31.2).

  16. K. I. Stjerna, Women and the Reformation (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2009), 133–47; M. Dentière and M. B. McKinley, Epistle to Marguerite de Navarre and Preface to a Sermon by John Calvin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004). I quote from Stjerna, pages 135, 136, 142, 146; from Dentière-McKinley, page 5.

  17. C. E. White, The Beauty of Holiness: Phoebe Palmer as Theologian, Revivalist, Feminist, and Humanitarian (Grand Rapids: Francis Asbury Press, 1986).

  18. L. C. Warner, Saving Women: Retrieving Evangelistic Theology and Practice (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2007), 224, 233–34, 250–51.

  Appendix 7: Genesis and Science

  1. A good sketch can be found in G. Rau, Mapping the Origins Debate: Six Models of the Beginning of Everything (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2012).

  2. John Soden, “Concordism,” in Dictionary of Christianity and Science, eds. P. Copan, T. Longman III, C. L. Reese, M. G. Strauss (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2017), 104–5.

  3. Dennis Venema, Scot McKnight, Adam and the Genome: Reading Scripture after Genetic Science (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2017).

  4. I sketch these ideas more at length in Venema and McKnight, Adam and the Genome, 111–91. Our view is noticeably non-concordist in that there is no attempt to show that the Bible is prescient in its presentation of what some have taken to be
scientific.

  5. I recommend the following very limited selection: John H. Walton, Genesis 1 as Ancient Cosmology (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2011); John H. Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2009); John H. Walton, The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2–3 and the Human Origins Debate (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2015); J. Richard Middleton, The Liberating Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis 1 (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2005); Peter Enns, The Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn’t Say about Human Origins (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2012); Edward J. Larson, Evolution: The Remarkable History of a Scientific Theory (New York: Modern Library, 2006).

  6. A slightly edited form from Venema and McKnight, Adam and the Genome, 107–8.

  7. Again, see Dennis Venema’s sections in Venema and McKnight, Adam and the Genome.

  8. Venema and McKnight, Adam and the Genome, 181. That much of what Paul says about Adam is not found in the Old Testament has been emphasized by Enns, The Evolution of Adam, 82–88.

  9. Venema and McKnight, Adam and the Genome, 181.