We are followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. We believe that following Jesus involves living faithfully under the authority of God’s word. This requires not squeezing the Bible to make it fit pre-chosen philosophical or cultural beliefs but taking it seriously and reading it carefully, with willingness to learn, listen, and obey.

That approach has made us into “mutualists”. We understand the Bible to teach:

the equality and complementarity of men and women, made in God’s image,
that husband and wife are equal partners in marriage, and
that God places no special restrictions on women’s ministry.

Mike strongly disagrees. He believes that the husband is the higher authority in marriage and that God prohibits women from fulfilling the leadership and teaching functions of church elders. He has set out those beliefs in his video series, containing some 43 hours of teaching.

The heart of our message is simple: despite his sincerity and his good intentions, Mike has not read the Bible – or relevant history and commentary – with the requisite skill, accuracy and thoroughness. Unwittingly, his teaching is leading many people into error, with damaging consequences.¹

After the 43 hours, you may be surprised at the mention of a lack of thoroughness. But that is what we have repeatedly found. His videos on Women in Ministry are marred by many mistakes and misunderstandings, and he has not considered weighty objections to the views that he puts forward – objections that remain unanswered. We will show that the reliability of his teaching on this topic is undermined by shortfalls in his training.

In contrast to Mike’s faulty interpretations, God’s word to women is altogether more wonderful, more life-giving, more joyous, more freeing, and more fruitful.

Mike’s reply to our critiques?

Mike published his Women in Ministry series in 13 parts, from March 2022 to March 2024.²

He is very confident of his position. In his Lesson Overview for Part 1, he stated:

I think egalitarian views (which hold there are simply no role differences related to authority between men and women in the government of the church) are obviously false.

However, on a number of occasions Mike invited responses. For example, in May 2022 he said:

I appreciate those who respond to me, and those who are critical of me even, but let me just say this. I watch the criticisms more than anything. I watch people pushing back. If you want to push back on me in this series, and you want my attention, you have to give details. I mean, source – quoting sources – real details: “Here was your claim, Mike. I understand your claim. Here’s my response. Here’s the evidence that shows that it was wrong.” If you do that, I’ll put it in my next video. (Part 6, 2hr12mins – 2hr13mins)

And in July 2022 he said:

If you’re a scholar who’s really studied in this area and you want to give me pushback, I really would like to read it now. If I’m wrong, I want to know it. Love to see that pushback. (Part 8, 0hr6mins)

Anyone with pushback – now’s the time to present it, but it’d better be good because I put a lot of work into it. I like to see serious pushback. And if I’m wrong, … if I can see I’m wrong, I’ll happily come out and recant and change and clip pieces out of a video and make a video telling everybody. That’d be fun. (Part 8, 1hr36mins)

Starting in 2022, we took up Mike’s invitations and sent him detailed responses to his videos on Women in Ministry, laying out for him the evidence that shows where he has gone wrong. (We also published the responses on Terran’s website.) In most of our responses, we stated in the introduction:

We commend Mike for his openness, and we thank him for his invitation. We are hopeful that his engaging with our feedback will result in a good conversation in which we all make progress in our understanding of God’s word.

On 11 March 2023, after he had received eight of our responses, he sent us a brief message, in which he stated:

… due to circumstances beyond my control I have to file them aside for the time being.

About a year later, someone on X (formerly Twitter) queried his lack of engagement with us. He replied:

If I ever come back and address critics I promise that you won’t like it. (27 March 2024)

So, it seems Mike is now confident that he knows in advance, without fully reading and engaging with our responses, that he is certainly right and those who disagree with him are certainly wrong.

To date, Mike’s promises of constructive engagement, and our hopes for it to happen, have not been fulfilled. We remain willing to engage with him.

In his Part 11 video, he said:

We all make mistakes – me too. Okay, there’s going to be things where years later I’m gonna go: “I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t realize I was wrong there.” (0hr48mins)

We hope it will not be years before he realizes that he needs to work on undoing the harm that flows from his faulty interpretations.

In the remainder of this article, we will comment on Mike’s thirteen videos, in order. We will spend longest on the subject of the first one – the crucial topic of thinking biblically.

#1, On thinking biblically

Part 1 video (length, 1hr10mins). Mike’s title and strapline:

Why We Can’t Think Biblically About It

WE BYPASS THE BIBLE

Our summary:

**His list of mistakes is critically incomplete: he is unaware of his own mistakes, and this is why he can’t think biblically about it**

In his Part 1 video, Mike talks about seven mistakes which he believes that people make, which prevent them thinking biblically about the subject of women in ministry. That is a very appropriate beginning for a Christian teacher who describes himself as the “BibleThinker”. He says the mistakes are “huge” (0hr2mins, 0hr22mins, 0hr25mins, 0hr48mins).

We firmly agree with Mike’s basic point that we should think biblically about this topic. We haven’t written a separate, detailed response to what Mike says in his Part 1 video, because we agree with a substantial proportion of what he says about the mistakes. Being aware of the seven dangers, he does a pretty good job of staying clear of them.

Our major concern is that Mike misses the importance of some other basic issues – issues which prevent Mike himself from thinking biblically about it, and which he appears to be unaware of.

The unidentified issues are three crucial shortfalls in training.

For historical reasons, this topic presents particular difficulties. A Christian teacher will struggle to navigate through it if:

(1) They lack the background knowledge and research skills which they need in order to fully understand the debate.

(2) They have not learned how to read accurately in context.

(3) They have not learned how to think and reason in a non-partisan way.

The history that makes this topic particularly challenging

The traditional majority view, taught by most Christian teachers through most of church history, was that women should be ruled by men in marriage, in wider society, and even in the church because women were less intelligent than men, less rational than men, less capable than men, and more prone to sin than men.

This view was not driven by what the Bible says but by the prevailing culture. In the fourth century BC, the great Greek philosopher Aristotle expressed this strongly held belief when he wrote:

… the male is more fitted to rule than the female … As between male and female this relationship of superior and inferior is permanent.³

The traditions of the Church should be treated with due respect. And we should certainly “contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people” (Jude 3, NIV). But we must also make space for Jesus’s beautifying of his bride – removing her besetting sins and errors of understanding of Scripture. So, for example, in the nineteenth century the Church belatedly shook off the unbiblical position that slavery was an acceptable practice, ordained by God.

In the same way, in the twentieth century it belatedly shook off the unbiblical position that women, in their nature, were inherently inferior to men.

By the late 1980s, the extent of the rejection of the traditional majority view of women and the breadth of agreement on men’s and women’s inherent equality was quite remarkable. Here are three statements from 1988 and 1989:

#1 “The biblical text provides sufficient bases for recognizing the essential equality of man and woman from the point of view of their humanity.”

#2 “The Bible teaches that woman and man were created for full and equal partnership.”

#3 “Both Adam and Eve were created in God’s image, equal before God as persons …”

#1 is Roman Catholic; #2 is from egalitarian protestants, #3 is from complementarian protestants.⁴

For about the last 50 years, as a result of this recovery of biblical understanding of the nature of women, there has been a massive debate over the details of the Bible’s teaching on men and women and on how it affects marriage, the place of women in wider society, and women’s ministry. All traditional expositions of Scripture passages about men and women have had to be re-examined, along with church practices. It has been a wide-ranging and very complex debate, and it still continues.

Describing how massive the debate is, Mike says:

So, women in ministry. that’s the topic – women’s roles, men’s roles, what are they? … Do they even exist? And it’s one of the biggest debates in the Christian world right now, especially the Western Christian world, which of course I’m part of. The amount of scholarly work and argument that goes into this issue is insane. It’s just totally insane. You could spend your whole life just studying this one topic and never read anything else and you would never run out of stuff. (Part 12, 0hr1min)

To fully understand this knotty debate, a certain level of research skills and background knowledge is needed. And it is critically important to read the text of the Bible accurately, with full attention to context. And meaningful evaluation of the conflicting arguments requires an ability to think and reason in an open-minded and non-partisan way.

Introducing what went wrong

As the “BibleThinker”, Mike’s aim is to think biblically and to teach the Bible thoughtfully. He is earnest and likable. He is gifted in presentation. These factors make his teaching attractive and persuasive. He has a large number of followers. People are hungry for solid teaching from someone that they trust.

In 2022, with the best of intentions, he entered into the massive academic, historical, theological and biblical debate about men and women. He wanted to provide for his many followers a sure-footed guide to its complexities. By his own admission, he has never done anything as challenging as this before: he says it took him a year to make the Part 12 video for the series.⁵

To those who have not studied all sides of the debate in depth, Mike’s teaching seems very persuasive. That is clear from the large numbers of enthusiastic comments which are posted under his videos on YouTube. Many listeners are pleased to accept what Mike says. They believe that he has thoroughly researched it. They naturally assume that he has accurately understood, presented and assessed the arguments of those whom he disagrees with – especially because Mike himself believes that is what he has done.

But – as his videos repeatedly reveal – he bit off more than he was able to chew. His presentation skills are not matched by the other skills that he needs for producing reliable output on this complex topic. Because this fact is of fundamental importance for assessing his teaching, this section #1 on thinking biblically will take up nearly one half of our article.

To avoid any misunderstanding, please notice that we are not making a criticism of Mike’s character or motives. Our concern is the insufficient extent to which he is trained and equipped to do what he has tried to do in this series.⁶

In reality, Mike’s content on this subject is one-sided and unreliable. Our concern is much more than a disagreement with his conclusions: our concern is that he has not mastered the debate, and that he doesn’t realize this. In our responses to his videos, we have provided detailed demonstrations of this.

We are aware that some readers may be very surprised by what we are saying here. But God’s word says:

In a lawsuit the first to speak seems right, until someone comes forward and cross-examines. (Proverbs 18:17)

So, we ask that you carefully read our article all the way through, with an open mind.

Our assessment of the quality of Mike’s reasoning is not unique. Here are some examples of others’ reactions:

We were in correspondence with a scholar who was starting from a complementarian position. When we drew his attention to Mike’s Part 4 video on New Testament women, he replied in a personal email:

… [other] people have been pointing me to his series as well, so I took about an hour and listened to one of his podcasts, which happened to deal with Phoebe and letter carrying—an area that I’ve done a bit of work on—and I found his analysis to be very poor and irresponsible.

When we later drew his attention to more of Mike’s output in the Women in Ministry series, he replied:

… he makes so many leaps and exegetical assumptions, it’s just hard to listen to at times.

And here is egalitarian Allison Quient, describing Mike’s content by comparing it with her experiences of grading undergraduate papers:

Fundamentally, he does not perceive or portray egalitarian arguments. … He’s moved through chapters in evidential and exegetical material – he just moved past all of it until he found something that looked kind of like what he expected and then clipped it. …

To me, it looks like someone had a paper to write and started with their “oh I’m gonna argue this” and then quickly mined through a bunch of books and then picked out things that sounded like what they expected – that they thought would match their point that they wanted to come across. That’s what it looks like to me. I’m not saying that’s necessarily an intentional thing, but that is a common way people approach research, frankly, and it looks like that’s what happened here.⁷

That is an unflattering description, but if you read (for example) our full response to Mike’s Part 12 video on 1 Timothy 2, you will see that it is phrased mildly in the circumstances.⁸

We will now explain each of the three basic shortfalls. As we go through, you will see that they are interconnected, so that they partly overlap.

As you read on, please remember this:

To say that someone has not acquired certain skills in research, in understanding context, or in assessing scholars’ arguments, is not a personal criticism which impugns their character or sincerity. A person can be a good person, full of the love and life of Christ, without having developed those practical skills. But those skills are absolutely needed for a high-profile teacher who claims to offer his followers a thorough evaluation of the widely-debated topic of women and ministry.

Background knowledge and research skills

Mike’s shortfall in background knowledge and research skills shows up many different ways, as we have documented in our published responses to his videos.

Here are some illustrations:

1 Timothy 2:12 is a central verse in the knotty debate. In this verse, scholars disagree over how to translate the rare Greek verb authenteō, which Paul says he’s not permitting a woman to do to a man. One aspect of the debate is: how was this rare word translated into Latin – does that shed light on its meaning? Mike gives his views on this, without the requisite analysis or research.

In early Latin translations, including the highly-respected version known as the Vulgate, authenteō was translated by the Latin verb dominari. According to Mike, this Latin word-choice supports his interpretation: by using the Greek verb authenteō, Paul means that a woman must not exercise authority as a church elder would. Mike thinks this is confirmed by other examples of the use of the Latin term dominari in the Vulgate, which he saw set out in a complementarian book.

But Mike does not notice that none of the examples listed in the book is relevant to the function of elders, and he does not look in the Vulgate for himself, to see how dominari is used. If he had done so, and assuming he could read Latin, he would have seen that this verb is used in the translation of Peter’s instructions to elders in 1 Peter 5:3, where Peter forbids them to dominari (lord it over) those who are entrusted to them. So, in the Vulgate, what a woman must not do to a man (1 Timothy 2:12), elders must not do to the flock (1 Peter 5:3). The Latin word-choice is directly against Mike’s view that authenteō is an appropriate word for the proper exercise of authority by an elder.

Because of Mike’s deficient knowledge and research, he unwittingly gives his audience the false message that the Latin translation supports his interpretation, when in fact it weighs against it.⁹

The debate over the meaning of authenteō also requires assessment of things written by various Church Fathers, such as Clement of Alexandria and John Chrysostom, and it considers the meanings of related words in Koine Greek and classical Greek. Mike lacks the reading and research skills, and the basic knowledge of the Church Fathers, which would enable him to understand and assess this part of the debate.

Mike instructs his audience it is “huge” that there are two places where Clement uses authenteō to mean ‘authority’.¹⁰ He believes this is very strong support for his interpretation. He believes it is huge because, among all the Church Fathers that he reviews, only Clement of Alexandria had classical training.

But anyone with basic knowledge of the Church Fathers would immediately know that Mike has gone astray here.

Mike is wrong about Clement’s supposedly exceptional knowledge of classical Greek. John Chrysostom was trained in the Greek classics by the foremost classical scholar of the time, who rated him as his best ever pupil. Mike got his false belief about the Church Fathers from misreading something that he saw in a scholarly article.¹¹

And Mike is also wrong about Clement’s supposed use of authenteō to mean ‘authority’. If he had looked at the Greek text of what Clement actually wrote, and assuming he had a sufficient ability to read Greek, he would have seen that Clement does not use the verb authenteō in either of the two places which Mike is referring to. As far as we can discover, Clement never, in the whole of his writings, uses authenteō to refer to authority.

If anything is “huge” here, it is that Mike unwittingly teaches untruths to a trusting audience because his background knowledge and his research are deficient.¹²

In 1 Timothy 2:12, scholars also debate how the verb for ‘permit’ should best be translated into English. Is Paul “not permitting” a woman to teach (present continuous tense, which could imply “not currently permitting”) or does Paul “not permit” it (simple present tense, which could imply “never permit”)? Again, Mike gives his views on this debate without having understood what he reads.

In the book Two Views on Women in Ministry, egalitarian scholar Linda Belleville points out that the Jerusalem Bible uses the present continuous tense in its translation of this verb. She cites this version not by giving its name but by means of the standard abbreviation “JB”. Mike says, with transparent honesty, that he doesn’t know what “JB” means.

Using his presentation skills to make it look like the fault is Belleville’s, as no doubt he believes it to be, he laments that she did not provide a footnote to explain the abbreviation, and he teaches his audience that Belleville is misleading people by wrongly making them think that a legitimate, published Bible version uses the present continuous tense.

It is not easy to imagine how a scholar could not know the meaning of “JB”.

To find out the meaning, all Mike needed to do was to look in the list of abbreviations at the front of the book. But it did not occur to him to do so.

Since Mike says that he spent a year of his life studying the debate about men and women, it is hard to understand how he could be so unfamiliar with academic books as not to know that the book would have a list of abbreviations.

And Mike claims to have read this particular book. To read it properly, it would be necessary to consult the list of abbreviations – which is eight pages long – for the meanings of some that are less well-known. We infer that Mike has not learned how to read a scholarly book with thoroughness.

As an alternative way of finding out the meaning of “JB”, Mike could have spent five seconds doing an online search: ‘Which Bible version is JB?’, but it did not occur to him to take this simple step. Instead, he glanced at an incomplete list of Bible versions which he happened to have, and didn’t find it there, or any use of the present continuous tense. It sounds as if he thought he was thereby doing some serious research, for he says:

I surveyed 30 English translations dating back to the Tyndale Bible from 1526.

Having not found JB in his incomplete list, he invents out of nowhere a theory that Belleville must be referring to the initials of an individual scholar – even though such a method of referencing is not used anywhere in the book.

It also doesn’t occur to him that he could easily check more than 60 English versions on the Bible Gateway website, to see if the present continuous tense is used by any reputable, scholar-produced versions. Had he done so, he would have found two such versions which use it (ISV and NTFE). Carried out competently, that research would have taken less than a minute.

What makes all this even stranger is that Mike says he has read Philip Payne’s book, Man and Woman, One in Christ; and Payne expressly cites the Jerusalem Bible on the very same point as Belleville. And he cites it in a chapter which Mike actually quotes from. Yet, somehow, Mike still didn’t understand. We are unsure how that could happen. We infer he must have skim-read Payne’s chapter without comprehending what he was reading.¹³ We are reminded of Allison Quient’s phrases – “quickly mined through a bunch of books” and “picked out things”.

This illustration of the low quality of our brother’s reading and researches makes us feel embarrassed on his behalf. It is not responsible scholarship. It is not scholarship.¹⁴

Another translation issue crops up in Romans 16:7. Complementarians have translated this verse in a new way, with the result that Paul no longer describes the woman Junia as an apostle. Are they correct to do so? Again, Mike gives his view without understanding what he reads.

Mike earnestly commends the new translation. But he frankly acknowledges that his grasp of New Testament Greek is insufficient for him to understand what has been written about this question. He relies on a controversial paper published in 2015, which he candidly admits he is not in a position to assess.¹⁵ As far as we can tell, Mike’s knowledge of Greek does not reach even a rudimentary level. His teaching notes suggest he doesn’t have a firm grasp even of the basic concept of grammatical ‘case’.¹⁶

Compounding the problem, his research skills are so lacking that he did not find any reply to the 2015 paper, even though a thoughtful and detailed rebuttal was published in one of the best-known theological journals.¹⁷

For some other examples of Mike not looking in the right places for his researches, see our footnote.¹⁸

Mike’s lack of background knowledge and research skills extends to more areas. We could show you how his lack of understanding of scholarly conventions of footnoting leads him to misunderstand and misrepresent scholars’ back-up for their opinions – which results in his mistakenly dismissing their opinions as baseless.¹⁹ We could show you his disregard of the most basic rule of hermeneutics.²⁰ We could show you his lack of understanding of the chronology of New Testament events.²¹ We could show you his lack of knowledge of social conditions in New Testament Times.²² All these errors have consequences, making Mike’s output unreliable. Our footnotes show where to find details.

We have said enough about this first shortfall. In sum, Mike repeatedly demonstrates that he is not equipped with the background knowledge and research skills which are needed for what he has taken on in this series.

Reading accurately in context

In principle, Mike knows the importance of reading accurately in context in order to understand the meaning of Scripture. In his teaching notes for Part 11 he writes:

… verses out of context is probably the single biggest plague modern Christian teachers are most often infected by.

We think he is probably right about that.

But there is a difference between knowing this in principle and implementing proper reading practices.

In our detailed responses, we have often pointed out his failure to read accurately in context. Those failures are particularly acute in his expositions of 1 Timothy 2 and of Ephesians 5. In both passages, he omits to look closely at the words leading up to a text which he treats as a proof-text. In Ephesians, he starts his exposition in the middle of a sentence.

He covers Ephesians 5 in his Part 9 video, together with some other passages about marriage. His approach to interpretation prompted us to write these words in our Part 9 response:

When we saw Mike’s approach to interpreting these excerpts, we remembered the title of his Part 1 video: ‘Why We Can’t Think Biblically About It’ and could not avoid considering ‘why he can’t think biblically about it’.

When we drive a car, there are certain basic precautions that we take for safety. The brakes are periodically checked. If our sight is imperfect, we wear glasses. We put on our seat belts. The precautions help to prevent crashes and injuries.

In the same way, when there is controversy over how a passage in a New Testament letter should be understood, we can take some basic precautions so that our interpretation isn’t a car crash.

We then described some of the needed precautions, which are different aspects of reading accurately in context:

… Consider the whole context – literary, historical and cultural.

Words: Look closely at the exact words, not relying only on English versions but checking what is in the Greek.

Train of thought: Trace the writer’s train of thought through the letter and through the particular passage under discussion.

Reasons for writing: Consider why the writer considers it important or relevant to say what he says.

The big picture: Scripture is God’s story with the world, a story about the coming of the Messiah (the Christ). A Christ-centered and canonical approach will ensure that our interpretation is true to the big picture of what Scripture is about. Adopting a canonical approach means that we assume a basic unity in the message of Scripture, so that where a passage is unclear and could be interpreted in more than one way, other passages, which are clearer, may guide us to avoid lines of interpretation which would produce a contradiction.

Of course, the precautions overlap. They are not separate; they need to be done together.

We added:

Surprisingly, Mike does not sufficiently attend to these basic precautions.

For more on Mike’s failures to read accurately in context, see our brief comments below on the videos for Parts 2 – 5 and 7 – 12 of his series, and for more detail please see our separate detailed responses to the various videos.

In the next subsection, we will show that it is not only Scripture that he does not read accurately in context. He brings a similar lack of comprehension to his reading of contemporary scholars, where he frequently misreads and misunderstands. Since Mike is unsuccessful in comprehending the writings of fellow believers, who are close to him in time and culture, and who write in his native English language, it is not reasonable to expect him to interpret correctly the finer points of what the apostle Paul wrote in a different time, and in a different culture, and in an ancient foreign language.

How to think and reason in a non-partisan way

So far as we can tell, all of Mike’s formation as a Christian has been in complementarian churches. So, it is very interesting that he repeatedly says he wanted to become egalitarian.²³

He discloses this in order to be transparent. Perhaps, in addition, he wants his audience to perceive him as willing to leave on one side his prior commitment to complementarianism and, instead, to assess and present both sides of the debate evenhandedly. Such an approach would enhance his credibility both in his own eyes and in the eyes of his audience.

We have no doubt Mike believes that he assesses and presents both sides with fairness. In his Part 1 video he says:

I’m entering into a massive, massive debate on this topic. People are well entrenched on both sides and there is, it is, a battleground, the topic of women in ministry. I’m not going to treat it that way. We’re going to treat this as a topic to understand, to evaluate, to consider and think about biblically, be aware of the people on both sides and treat them as our brothers and sisters in Christ. That’s the approach we’re going to have here. (0hr1min)

And he says:

We’re gonna hear both sides … … So, you’re gonna hear all the best arguments hopefully and make your own choices in the end. (1hr9mins)

But the problem is, he does not in fact evaluate or present the debate in an even-handed way. His hope that his audience will hear from him “all the best arguments” is not fulfilled.

Why not? Because he has not learned how to think and reason in a non-partisan way – a shortfall that he is not aware of.

How do we know that is the reason? Because he makes it plain by what he says.

Six features show it unmistakably. The first is a discord in his reasoning; the second is his strawmanning of egalitarian arguments; the third is his failure to engage with objections to his complementarian views; the fourth is his failure to question his own understanding; the fifth is a discord in his presentation; the sixth is his false imputations about egalitarian motives.

First, the discord in his reasoning.

The discord is between the reasoning which he applies to views that he agrees with and the reasoning that he applies to views that he opposes.

When he opposes a view, he offers an argument which he believes justifies rejecting that view. But when he agrees with a view, he overlooks that the same line of argument would equally justify rejecting the view that he agrees with.

We’ll take an example from his Part 7 video. He reads out a quotation from an egalitarian scholar who says that the purpose of Paul’s letter to the Galatians was to deal with cultural conflicts, the dynamics of power, and the tension between Law and liberty. Mike objects to the anachronistic use of language:

The term “dynamics of power”. No, that is simply not in Galatians. Dynamics of power? Now, you could with a critical theory lens or a feminism lens, you could look at Galatians and go: “That’s what we call dynamics of power.” But you’ve turned it into a category that you operate in, that Paul is probably completely unaware of. This is critical theory or feminism in Bible study …”

… When we make Galatians about critical theory, you end up with egalitarianism. You have to. Because that’s what you started with. That’s what you made it about. (Part 7, 1hr41mins – 1hr 42mins)

But Mike offers expositions of Genesis, Ephesians and 1 Timothy which depend on his complementarian redeployment of the modern sociological concept of gender “roles” – a concept that is nowhere mentioned in the Bible.²⁴

In his own words, the essence of Mike’s complementarian view of men and women is: “equal in nature, different in role”.²⁵ In his video series, Mike uses this contemporary sociological term more than 800 times. So, Mike ought to object:

The term “role”. No, that is simply not in Genesis or Ephesians or 1 Timothy. Roles? Now, you could with a complementarian-sociological lens, you could look at Genesis or Ephesians or 1 Timothy and go: “That’s what we call gender “roles”. But you’ve turned it into a category that you operate in, that Paul is probably completely unaware of. This is modern, secular sociology in Bible study …”

… When we make Genesis or Ephesians or 1 Timothy about gender “roles”, you end up with complementarianism. You have to. Because that’s what you started with. That’s what you made it about.

But does Mike say any such thing in his videos? He does not.²⁶

The arguments which he employs for rejecting opposing views are not employed by him to reject his own views, however aptly those arguments apply. We give more examples of this feature below in our brief comments on the Part 2 and Part 12 videos, and also elsewhere.²⁷

Someone thinking and reasoning in a non-partisan way would normally perceive when arguments, which they use for rejecting views that they oppose, apply equally to views which they agree with.

Second, Mike’s strawmanning of egalitarian arguments.

There are many examples of this feature throughout his series. He regularly misreads what an egalitarian scholar has written, erects a distorted version of it – a straw man – then demolishes the straw man.

Someone thinking and reasoning in a non-partisan way would be diligent to avoid strawmanning and would seek out the steel man arguments – the strongest ways in which the arguments can be accurately expressed, and address those arguments.

Even though he strawmans frequently, we do not suggest he is deliberately misleading his audience about what egalitarian scholars have written. But the fact that he strawmans so often, without realizing that he is doing it, shows conclusively that he has not learned how to think and reason in a non-partisan way.

We pointed out his misreading and misunderstanding of scholars in our Part 3 response as regards Philip Payne, in our Part 4 response as regards Lynn Cohick, Linda Belleville, Wayne Meeks, Tom Wright, Craig Keener, and Philip Payne, in our Part 5 response as regards Craig Keener and Tom Wright, in our Part 8 response as regards Philip Payne, Catherine Kroeger, Ron Pierce, Elizabeth Kay and Lynn Cohick, in our Part 9 response as regards Peter Davids and Lynn Cohick, in our Part 10 response as regards Philip Payne, in our Part 12 special on the meaning of authenteō as regards Cynthia Westfall, Andrew Bartlett, Philip Payne and Linda Belleville, and in our main Part 12 response as regards Philip Payne, Linda Belleville, Andrew Bartlett, Sandra Glahn and Craig Keener. These are merely examples, because we have not sought to identify all of his misreadings and misunderstandings, but only the ones most relevant for our responses. We mention some examples below, in our brief comments on the Part 4 and Part 8 videos.

Third, Mike’s failure to engage with weighty objections to his complementarian views.

Mike makes repeated claims about the thoroughness with which he has examined the debate. He promises that his audience will hear from him “all the best arguments”.

An even-handed researcher, who knew how to think and reason in a non-partisan way, would note the relevant arguments on each side and evaluate them.

But in Mike’s discussions of the issues, he regularly omits to address weighty egalitarian objections to his views. Such omissions became a refrain in our responses. For example, here are some sample phrases quoted from two of our responses, listed with the page number from the pdf copy:

From our Part 2 response:

[page 11] Mike … does not address the most pertinent biblical points:

[14] Mike … does not provide an answer to this difficulty for his view.

[14] Mike does not address this difficulty.

[15] … he does not address this difficulty.

[15] Mike does not address this difficulty.

[16] Mike does not explain how …

[21] Mike does not explain why …

From our Part 12 response:

[page 14] Mike does not tell his audience about this feature of Payne’s argument …

[20] Mike does not say why …

[23] Mike does not address their actual reasoning.

[24] Mike does not say.

[24] Despite much prompting, from us and others, he does not even consider the question.

[32] Mike does not answer this question.

[37] Mike does not notice that …

[37] Mike does not consider …

[46] Mike does not provide an explanation

[47] Mike does not say.

[53] Mike does not address this question.

[57] Mike does not engage with Glahn’s actual argument …

[58] Mike does not grapple with the fact …

[59] He does not anywhere address the strong cumulative case.

[63] What is Mike’s answer to this point? None. He does not address it.

[64] What is Mike’s answer to this point? None. He does not address it.

[64] What is Mike’s answer to this point? None. He does not address it.

It is the same story in most of the videos. This is avoidance of opposing arguments on a large scale. We are reminded of Allison Quient’s description:

Fundamentally, he does not perceive or portray egalitarian arguments.

We give a vivid example below, in our brief comments on his Part 11 video about 1 Corinthians 14:34-35. In regard to the interpolation view, Mike considered only the side of the discussion which he preferred and did not directly engage with any of the scholarship or evidence in favor of the interpolation view.

Fourth, his failure to question his own understanding;

In his Part 4 video he spends seven minutes taking Linda Belleville to task for some words she wrote about women deacons, expressing his bafflement that she could have written something so obviously wrong, and making her look careless and foolish – all the while, entirely unaware that the problem was his own misreading and misunderstanding of what she wrote. He misreads both her footnote and her main text. In fact, he agrees with what she was actually saying.²⁸

A person thinking and reasoning in a non-partisan way would have thought to themselves: ‘This seems to make no sense at all, have I misunderstood something?’ But Mike did not.

In his Part 8 video, he radically misreads something written by Ron Pierce and Elizabeth Kay about Ephesians 5, turning it into something that could scarcely be more different from what they actually wrote. He gives his false version, then exclaims with great emphasis:

Really? Not in my Bible!²⁹

Someone thinking and reasoning in a non-partisan way would have said to themselves: ‘that’s nothing like what the Bible says in this passage, so have I misread something?’ Looking again, with greater care, they would discover their mistake.

But that is not Mike’s way.

Fifth, the discord in his presentation.

The discord is between Mike’s forceful criticisms of what he perceives to be poor arguments by egalitarian scholars and his tactful discretion when he perceives poor arguments by complementarian scholars.

In biblical studies, regrettably, it is not particularly unusual to encounter poor arguments. It is especially so in areas which are strongly contested and in areas of distinctive denominational allegiance.

It is a fact of life that some scholars advance flimsy arguments in support of their preferred position. Because of their prior commitment to a particular view, they do not perceive the weakness of what they write.

Someone who has learned to think and reason in a non-partisan way would expect to see this on both sides of the debate, and would take care not be distracted by it. If a scholar advances a weak argument, it does not follow that their position is incorrect. It may be supported by better arguments which they have missed or which are advanced by them elsewhere.

A lifetime in the legal profession has made Andrew sensitive not only to poor arguments but to their unintended effects. In March 2022, when Andrew saw Mike’s extravagant and one-sided remarks about the faults of egalitarian scholars in the Part 3 video, and Mike’s statement that it was the errors of egalitarian scholars that made him stay complementarian,³⁰ Andrew wrote to Mike, to explain the risk of distraction. He finished with these words:

Here is my fervent plea: please do not allow your judgment to be influenced by where you find bad arguments. Partisan thinkers advance bad arguments; it is a fact of life. The presence of bad arguments tells us nothing about which position is right.

Andrew’s plea was not taken to heart. In his series, Mike doubled down on forceful criticisms of egalitarian scholars (often because he misread what they wrote³¹), making real or imagined poor scholarship a reason for rejecting the whole egalitarian position, while regularly drawing a discreet veil over poor reasoning by complementarian scholars.

In his presentation, Mike often uses strong language about the writings of egalitarian scholars with whom he disagrees, applying colorful (and usually unjustified) descriptions, such as “egregious scholarly error”, “trickery”, “playing games with Scripture”, and “fabricated and pushed onto the passage”. This is in stark contrast to his reticence over genuinely poor arguments advanced by complementarian scholars.

We have already referred above to the Vulgate’s translation of authenteō in 1 Timothy 2:12 with the Latin verb dominari. Mike says that Linda Belleville reads dominari as pejorative (negative), and offers this explanation of her view:

You’ll understand why. In English it sounds that way because it uses the Latin term ‘dominari’. ‘Dominari’ sounds like ‘dominate’, sounds like ‘domineering’. … But abogado sounds like avocado but it means lawyer.

Then he laughs [Part 12 at 6:36:27].

His explanation is imaginary. He would have been wiser not to misrepresent her view and not to mock it with a false argument. The words abogado and avocado are not an apt analogy, since they are entirely unrelated. Belleville is not relying on a random similarity of sound, for the English words ‘dominate’ and ‘domineer’ are both derived from the Latin verb dominari. And we have already seen that the Vulgate uses dominari negatively in regard to church elders, who are instructed not to domineer over their flock.³²

In contrast to Mike’s presentation of Belleville’s imagined error, notice how delicately Mike glosses over complementarian attempts to turn Junia into a man in Romans 16:7.

On the debated question whether Paul is referring to Junia (a woman) or Junias (a man), Mike spends less than one minute (Part 5, 0:27:05 to 0:27:55). He says it’s not “worth spending time on the idea that Junia was male”. That is a significant judgment, by which he dismisses as unworthy of consideration a large quantity of complementarian scholarship devoted to proving that Junia was or could have been a man. Some leading complementarian scholars such as Al Wolters and Kevin DeYoung continue to claim that she was probably a man called ‘Junias’.³³

But does Mike’s presentation set out their unsatisfactory arguments, and describe them with colorful language? It does not.

To present and assess those arguments, he would have needed to tell his audience that, from antiquity, there are hundreds of examples of the female name Junia and not even one of the imaginary male name Junias (except in corrupt texts referring to the apostle Junia). That would disclose the unreasonableness of arguments advanced by complementarian scholars.

He could have related how a complementarian scholar reasons that John Chrysostom may have mistaken Junia’s name as that of a woman because Chrysostom was writing “at a time when the knowledge of Greek was on the decline in the West”. Chrysostom served in the East, not the West. Preaching in his native Greek language, he was the foremost Christian orator of his generation. A decline in the knowledge of Greek in the West is of no conceivable relevance to Chrysostom’s understanding of Scripture. It is hard to imagine a more wrong-headed and foolish argument.³⁴

Someone thinking and reasoning in a non-partisan way would not present the debate in this lop-sided manner, where complementarian errors are glossed over or treated with kid gloves and real or imagined egalitarian errors are ridiculed.

This disparity in presentation does not reflect the reality known to Mike. He knows that some complementarians advance very poor arguments. In his Part 7 video, in the midst of criticizing the quality of egalitarian scholarship, and egalitarian misrepresentations of complementarian arguments, he offers a jokey aside:

Some complementarians are pretty lousy, so just quote them. You don’t have to misrepresent them. They look pretty bad. (Part 7, 1hr27mins)

But though he here admits the truth, he does not illustrate it.

We can understand why Mike prefers to draw a tactful veil over flimsy complementarian arguments. But this approach stands in contrast to how he speaks of egalitarian scholars, when he believes them to have made mistakes. Mike’s lack of awareness of this disparity in presentation indicates that he has not learned to think and reason in a non-partisan way.

Sixth, Mike’s false imputations about egalitarian motives.

An even-handed researcher, who has learned to think and reason in a non-partisan way, would not make false imputations about the motives of those they disagree with. They would be able to imagine how it could be that a brother or sister might disagree with them out of good and worthy motives.

This point is so obvious that it does not need to be explained. For some examples see the footnote.³⁵

Upholding biblical thinking

In his Lesson Overview for his first video, Mike states:

In today’s video, I’ll walk through the biggest reason why I’m not egalitarian, as I discuss philosophical beliefs that egalitarians often bring into the debate, which make it impossible for them to be open to following the Bible if it leads toward complementarian views.

Mike thinks that those who disagree with him on Women in Ministry do so because of prior philosophical beliefs. He thinks the reason he has not become egalitarian is that he follows Scripture rather than such beliefs.

We wish to say that we did not arrive at our mutualist views on this topic, as set out in our books, by subjecting Scripture to philosophical beliefs. We arrived at them by reading Scripture as faithfully as we know how.

As we see it, Mike’s eschewing of supposed egalitarian philosophical beliefs is not the root cause of Mike remaining complementarian. The root cause, as we have demonstrated in some 450 pages of detailed responses, is that Mike has missed what Scripture actually teaches.

How can it be that Mike the BibleThinker has missed it? It is because he is not equipped to navigate the massive debate around women in ministry and to think biblically about it. There is a shortfall in his background knowledge and research skills, and he has not yet learned to read accurately in context, nor has he yet learned how to think and reason in a non-partisan way.

Those shortfalls have made his output unreliable.

In the second half of this article, we will briefly review Mike’s other videos in the series, from #2 to #13.

#2, Men and women created as partners (Genesis 1 – 3)

Part 2 video (length, 2hr10mins), Mike’s title and strapline:

Was Women’s Submission Just a Curse to Be Overturned?

“BUT HE SHALL RULE OVER YOU”

Our summary:

**Builds a house of cards by adding an implication into Genesis 1 – 3**

For a reader not wearing patriarchal or complementarian spectacles, the teaching of Genesis 1 – 3 about men and women and authority seems pretty straightforward:

In chapter 1, men and women are made in the image of God to be co-rulers over creation (1:26-28).
In chapter 2, men and women are shown to be basically the same as humans (2:23 “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh”) yet complementary to each other because of their differentiation of gender (2:18, 24). The Woman is the Man’s ‘ēzer kenegdô – a help corresponding to him, his strong ally (2:18). (The Hebrew word ‘ēzer does not indicate that the helper is subordinate: in the Bible, it is mostly used of God, as Israel’s strength or help, and sometimes of a military protector.)
In chapter 3, one of the adverse consequences of human disobedience to God is male rule (3:16: “he will rule over you”).

In the 4^th century AD, John Chrysostom was a vocal advocate for the subordination of woman to man. Patriarchy was in the air that he breathed. But even Chrysostom saw clearly that God’s design in Genesis 2 was for the full equality of woman and man, that Genesis does not show an authority of man over woman before the disobedience, and that man’s ascendancy in authority only came in as a result of the disobedience.³⁶

But because of the culture in which he lived, where male rule was taken for granted, Chrysostom missed a big point: since our Lord Jesus Christ came to overcome the effects of human disobedience to God, we are working against our Lord if we try to maintain man’s ascendancy over woman.

Mike is faced with the difficulty that there is nothing actually said in Genesis about male authority over women before the disobedience. To construct a foundation for his complementarian outlook, Mike argues that a creation design of male authority is implied.

If we attend closely to the words of the text, and to its narrative technique and structure, it becomes apparent that the implication, for which Mike argues, is not actually there. We have discussed all of Mike’s points in our detailed response.

In brief, he does not read accurately in context because:

He fails to consider the narrative technique and narrative structure of Genesis 2 – 3.
Although he correctly recognizes that in Genesis 1 ’ādām refers to Humankind, both male and female, he mistakenly ignores this meaning in his reading of Genesis 2 – 3.
Discussing the Woman as Man’s ‘helper’, he confuses purpose with authority.
He fails to notice that 1 Corinthians 7 rules out his interpretation of the Man’s naming of Woman.
He misreads Romans 5, muddling together Adam’s representation of all Humankind with Adam’s supposed authority over his wife.
He misses the full significance of the Creator’s authoritative word of explanation in Genesis 2:24, which contradicts the patriarchal system.

And he shows that he has not learned to think and reason in a non-partisan way, because:

He assumes that in chapter 2 the Woman is given God’s command by the Man, but there is no indication of this in the text.

Besides, leaving all the details of the discussion on one side, a supposed implication is not a sufficient basis for a doctrine, and certainly not for a doctrine that subordinates 50% of the human race.

When Mike disagrees with a doctrine, he firmly rejects the idea of building it on a supposed implication, without a clear statement in the text. Because he disagrees with the traditional doctrine that women are more easily deceived than men, he rightly says in his Part 12 video:

Where in Genesis 2 does it SAY that the reason why Eve was tricked is because she was more easy to trick? We read that into the text. You can assume that if you want, but I don’t want to base a belief about women universally, about billions of people, off of just that kind of a guess. (Part 12, 9hr33mins)

He should apply the same standard to his own doctrine that Genesis 2 establishes male authority before the fall even though the text of the Bible does not say so.

But he does not apply that standard, because he has not learned to think and reason in a non-partisan way. He is content to build it off “that kind of a guess”.

You may wonder, what is Mike’s answer to the objection that he is here building a doctrine off things which are not stated in the text of Scripture but which he claims are implied? None. He doesn’t offer an answer to it.

Back in March 2022, Andrew wrote to Mike, asking some specific questions:

If the OT affirms male authority as God’s design for marriage, (1) Why is there no OT law or statement which says that a woman ought to obey her husband? (2) Why is there no OT law or statement which says that a man ought to exercise authority over his wife?

Those questions remain unanswered.

Even if it were acceptable to build a doctrine on an implication (though it isn’t), and even if Mike had successfully demonstrated that Genesis 2 implies male authority as God’s original design in the first creation (though he hasn’t), it would still need to be separately established that the same model is intended to be adhered to in Christian marriage and ministry, which are lived out in anticipation of the new creation. Our answers must finally depend not on how we read Genesis 2, but on how we read the relevant New Testament texts.

(To see our detailed response to Mike’s Part 2 video, go to www.bit.ly/40lo9oh.)

#3, Women in the Old Testament

Part 3 video (length, 1hr54mins), Mike’s title and strapline:

How Women Could and Couldn’t Lead in the Old Testament

WHY NO FEMALE PRIESTS

Our summary:

**Downgrades Miriam and Deborah, and misunderstands the significance of the OT priesthood**

Miriam

While Moses was the main leader of the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, his brother Aaron and his sister Miriam were co-leaders, as Micah 6:4 shows. At least 14 English versions translate Micah 6:4 explicitly using the word “lead” or “leader” to refer to the function which God gave to Miriam, Aaron and Moses – including the NIV (the most widely used and trusted) and even the NET (written by complementarians). This translation fits the context and is supported by it.

But Mike does not pay attention to the context, and he accuses egalitarian Philip Payne of “reckless handling of the text” because Payne offers this translation (Part 3, 0hr19mins). Philip Payne, and the learned translators of the NIV, the NET and other versions, read Hebrew. As far as we can tell, Mike does not. Yet he has the unfounded overconfidence to make that wrong accusation, and publicize it to his large audience.³⁷

Deborah

Mike sees in his review of Old Testament women a principle that leadership of God’s people at the highest level is reserved by God to men. But that supposed principle is in conflict with the story of Deborah as presented in the Bible text.

Deborah is an example of a woman called by God to lead at the highest level and to exercise the highest authority over God’s people as civic and spiritual leader. This is apparent from close attention to Judges 2:16-19 and 4 – 5. She even summoned, commanded and commissioned Israel’s most powerful man (Barak).

Of all the leaders in the book of Judges, she alone is similar to Samuel, the great leader of Israel, in the threefold tasks of judging the people’s disputes, prophesying God’s word, and issuing instructions for battle. But Mike doesn’t perceive this similarity and doesn’t offer any comment on it.

OT priesthood

Mike believes that the regulations for the Old Testament priesthood support his claim about God reserving the highest leadership for men. His theory is that priests had to be male because of men’s creation-derived “male role of authority” (1hr43mins).

But Scripture does not state a reason for the qualifications for priesthood. Mike candidly admits that the Bible does not say that women are disqualified because God wants to preserve male authority (1hr43mins). So, as in his treatment of Genesis, Mike is building his doctrine on speculation, rather than on what the text actually says.

Besides, his speculation does not reflect the biblical requirements. To be a priest, it was necessary to be a male descendant of Aaron without physical defect. Aaron was a great grandson of Levi (the third of Jacob’s 12 sons). If Mike is going to speculate about an implied reason for the requirements for the priesthood, the least he needs to do is offer a speculation which corresponds to the requirements. If Mike thinks that the qualifications for priesthood were based on a differentiation in creation-derived authority, he needs to explain why a descendant of Aaron had more creation-derived authority than a descendant of Reuben (Jacob’s firstborn), and an able-bodied person more than someone with a physical defect. Mike offers no comment on this objection to his view.

Seen in its broad biblical context, the significance of the OT priesthood does not support Mike’s view about reserving highest spiritual authority to men. Biblically, the priesthood of the old covenant foreshadows the ministry of Jesus Christ, our Great High Priest, in whom all believers become priests, both men and women, now and in eternity (Hebrews 2 – 10; 1 Peter 2:5, 9; Revelation 1:6; 5:10; 20:6). So, if qualification for priesthood were somehow regarded as a litmus test of highest spiritual authority, the lesson would be that under the new covenant such authority is fully shared by both men and women.

In a later video Mike rightly concedes that being an OT priest “has nothing to do with … being an elder” (Part 6, 1hr49mins). The OT priesthood does not support Mike’s complementarian view on women’s ministry.

(To see our detailed response to Mike’s Part 3 video, go to www.bit.ly/3jAjCNX.)

#4, Leadership and teaching in New Testament churches

Part 4 video (length, 2hr5mins), Mike’s title and strapline:

Women Leaders in the New Testament

WERE WOMEN OVERSEERS ELDERS OR DEACONS?

Our summary:

**Derailed by a multitude of elementary mistakes and by failure to consider objections**

For our detailed response, we selected five main topics that Mike covers in his Part 4 video: (1) qualifications for elders, (2) qualifications for women deacons, (3) church hosts, (4) Priscilla and (5) Phoebe. We documented a wide range of mistakes that he makes.

We noted his lack of background knowledge and research skills in several respects: insufficient familiarity with New Testament Greek (regarding elders, deacons, and Phoebe), unskilled use of Greek lexicons (Phoebe), inadequate research (elders, church hosts, Priscilla, Phoebe), misapprehending the chronology of events in the New Testament (elders, church hosts, Priscilla), and unevidenced or mistaken assertions about the historical realities of life in New Testament times (elders, church hosts, Phoebe).

We noted his failure to read in context, that is, his too-superficial examination of the Bible text being interpreted (elders, deacons, Priscilla), and his inadequate attention to literary and historical context (all five topics).

We saw that he has not learned to think and reason in a non-partisan way. We noted his omitting to consider important opposing arguments (elders, deacons, church hosts, Phoebe), mis-reading and misjudging what other scholars have said and written (church hosts, Phoebe), and flawed logic or flawed reasoning from the text (elders, deacons, church hosts, Phoebe).

Below, we will address each topic briefly.

Qualifications for elders

At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit and his gifts were given to men and women alike. In New Testament times, it could not simply be assumed that women should be excluded from church eldership. If there was to be a rule excluding women from being appointed as elders, it needed to be laid down in definite terms and clearly communicated to the churches.

Paul sets out qualifications for church elders in 1 Timothy 3:1-7 and in Titus 1:5-9. These would be the prime places to specify a clear and definite prohibition on women’s eldership, if that was Paul’s intent.

Mike thinks that the qualifications are masculine and they plainly require that all elders be men who are able to teach. He sees this as a “very strong argument” against the egalitarian position that women may be elders.³⁸

But Mike’s consideration of these texts is superficial. He spends less than five minutes on them in this video. His analysis contains elementary errors. He insists that in 1 Timothy 3 verses 6 and 7 the text indicates ‘he’, which is masculine, therefore elders must be men. But the word ‘he’, though included in some English versions, is not in Paul’s Greek text, which contains no masculine pronouns. The Greek text of Paul’s list contains indications of gender-neutrality and is capable of applying to women, as is apparent from closely examining it, which Mike omits to do.

Prominent complementarian scholars, who read New Testament Greek, fairly acknowledge that the qualifications or indicators set out by Paul do not clearly exclude women, but Mike appears to be unaware of this.

Mike regards Paul’s lists of qualifications as “the exact, specific requirements”.³⁹ But nearly everyone other than Mike reads them as indicative rather than legislative. There are differences between the two lists. If you read them as legislative, even Jesus and Paul would not be regarded as fit for eldership, because they were not householders, were not married, and did not have children. Mike simply ignores this objection. Even when he revisits the topic in his Part 13 video, trying to strengthen his arguments, he continues to ignore this basic objection.

Mike is out on a limb. In the seminal complementarian book Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, John Piper and Wayne Grudem address the question ‘Where in the Bible do you get the idea that only men should be the pastors and elders of the church?’ Their answer does not mention 1 Timothy 3 or Titus 1. Similarly, even the Statement of Faith of the Calvary Chapel Association, to which Mike’s own church belongs, does not rely on the list in 1 Timothy 3 or Titus 1 for its ban on women elders.⁴⁰

This brings into sharp focus a fundamental weakness in any complementarian position on women’s ministry: a definite and clearly communicated rule excluding women from eldership is absent from precisely the places where we would expect to see it, if such a rule existed.

Qualifications for women deacons

Mike interprets 1 Timothy 3:11 as qualifications for women deacons. We agree that this is a justifiable interpretation.

Mike thinks that this verse shows, by contrast with 3:1-7, that no women may be elders. But that is a misunderstanding, which largely flows from his insufficient attention to the qualifications for elders. In both cases, Paul indicates that he is talking about women as well as men. In the list for elders, he does this by context (women are the subject of the preceding verses) and by his choice of a gender-neutral pronoun in 3:1 and 3:5 (Greek tis – anyone). In the list for deacons, he does this by interjecting in 3:11 an indication that the same requirements as in 3:8-10 apply to women deacons.

When Mike revisits this topic in his Part 13 video,⁴¹ he refers to Paul’s idiomatic expression (“one-woman man”) used in 3:2 and 3:12, and says “I’ve never seen a single example of that term being used in Greek in any text to refer to a woman or a mixed gender group.” If he had read our Part 4 response, which we sent to him, he would have known that John Chrysostom (a native Greek speaker and highly educated), even though he insisted on exclusively male leadership, explained that in 3:12 this expression applied to both men and women.

Women as church hosts

Egalitarian scholars believe that, because New Testament women hosted churches in their houses, they probably became elders/overseers of those churches. This is to be inferred from what is in the text of the New Testament and from historical knowledge of the responsibilities of householders in Greco-Roman culture.

Mike disagrees. He says that this belief is a “serious, egregious scholarly error”. He gives nine reasons.

On examination of Mike’s nine reasons, it becomes apparent that Mike mis-reads and misunderstands the writings of a number of scholars.

He misreads Lynn Cohick. To rebut what he imagines she meant, he looks at 18 commentaries, and answers the wrong question. His review of the commentaries actually supports what she says, though he doesn’t realize it.

He strawmans Linda Belleville as making an absurd point about a householder automatically becoming an elder. In the part of the work quoted by Mike, Belleville’s actual point, clearly spelled out by her, is that Nympha, as a householder, had obvious church-leadership potential.

Belleville cites the work of Wayne Meeks. Meeks was one of the foremost authorities on the social world of the apostle Paul. Mike claims that Belleville has radically misunderstood what Meeks wrote. Mike sets out an incomplete quote from Meeks, and presents it as a knock-out blow to the egalitarian idea that women church hosts became elders. Mike states with emphasis and repetition that this egalitarian idea is “completely false”.

But Mike’s research is inadequate and it is Mike himself who has radically misread and misunderstood what Meeks wrote. Meeks’ own conclusion was that women mentioned by Paul were in positions of leadership in local congregations. Meeks mentions Priscilla as a church host who, with her husband, presided over house churches.

So, Mike is misleading his audience by wrongly criticizing Belleville and by presenting Meeks as supporting the opposite of Meeks’ actual view. We commented:

Out of fairness to Linda Belleville, Mike would do well to issue a correction of his portrayal of her understanding of Meeks’ scholarship as radically defective, making clear that the radical defect of understanding was his own.

So far as we are aware, Mike has not issued any corrections.

Mike also makes the elementary mistake of thinking that in the relevant respects Greco-Roman culture was similar to today’s Western culture. He approaches the matter as if considering what arrangements would be likely if a Christian group were hosted in a private home in 21^st century California. But in Greco-Roman culture the legal responsibility of the host for what went on in their home would create a powerful practical imperative for the host to be an elder.

In Colossians 4:15 Paul refers to Nympha and the church in her house (see NIV, ESV, NET, NRSV). Early scribes who understood the cultural pressure for the host to be a leader, and who believed that leaders must be male, ‘corrected’ Paul’s letter by turning Nympha into a man (as reflected in KJV).

Who do you think is more likely to understand what it would mean to host a house church in the culture in which Nympha lived – ancient scribes or Mike Winger?

Priscilla

Mike correctly notes that Priscilla, with her husband Aquila, taught Christian doctrine to a man, Apollos. But he asserts that she did not teach him with authority.

Mike’s examination of the biblical evidence about Priscilla is superficial and his interpretation is unrealistic.

A ministry team of three arrives in Ephesus – Paul, Priscilla and Aquila. When Paul departs from Ephesus, he leaves them there to continue the work (Acts 18:19-21). So, who must now lead and guide and teach the new group of believers? The couple whom Paul had brought with him as his co-workers. Paul later describes Priscilla and Aquila in exactly this way, as his co-workers (Romans 16:3).

Their function is confirmed by the way they deal with Apollos (Acts 18:24-26). Why should that great orator take any notice of Priscilla and Aquila? Because, as the situation demanded, they were authorized by Paul to oversee the fledgling church. They hosted the church in their house (1 Corinthians 16:19) and drew Apollos into the fellowship (Acts 18:27).

The functions of elders or pastor-teachers are to lead and shepherd the flock and to teach apostolic doctrine. Those are the functions which Priscilla and Aquila performed in Ephesus. Later, they moved back to Rome and hosted a church there (Romans 16:5).

Phoebe

Mike gives good reasons for concluding that Phoebe, in Romans 16:1, was probably a deacon, despite the ESV’s translation as ‘servant’. (However, as we’ve mentioned, he spends seven minutes on a misconceived criticism of Linda Belleville’s scholarship – his failure to read correctly both her main text and her footnote shows that he currently lacks the requisite skills for reading academic work.⁴²)

Mike rightly affirms that Phoebe carried Paul’s letter to Rome (Romans 16:1-2). But he balks at the idea that Phoebe, as the letter-carrier, probably explained Paul’s letter to the Roman Christians, as stated by Tom Wright.

Wright is probably the best-known conservative New Testament scholar in the world today. After studying Greek and Latin literature and history at Oxford, he moved into theology and into church leadership.⁴³ He has devoted his life to serving the Lord both in the academy and in the church. He is highly respected, across denominational divides. Mike’s familiarity with Greco-Roman languages, literature, culture and history is not remotely comparable with Wright’s. But that doesn’t stop him confidently contradicting Wright on a matter of Greco-Roman practice in the first century AD.

In Mike’s video he tries to imagine the practicalities of sending and receiving a letter in the ancient world. But his imagination is a long way off track, because he lacks the needed background knowledge of the social world of the apostle Paul and he has not read the relevant research.

Mike claims there is no evidence for the practice of letter-carriers explaining letters to the recipients. He mentions two sentences written by Craig Keener, misunderstands Keener’s footnote, misses where Keener set out his sources, and then simply dismisses the idea. He says:

I spent some time on this. I can’t find anything that supports it in any strong way at all. (1hr22mins)

Instead of asking himself whether he may have missed something, since Wright and Keener know far more about Hellenic culture than he does, he tells his audience the idea is “weird”.

But there is serious historical research on this, based on detailed study of primary sources. The problem is that Mike lacks the background knowledge and research skills that he needs, and so he did not find the relevant scholarly materials and evidence. We cite some of the research in our detailed response. It shows that accredited letter-carriers functioned

as personal mediators of Paul’s authoritative instruction to his churches, and as the earliest interpreters of the individual letters.⁴⁴

So, contrary to Mike’s view that women must not teach with authority, Phoebe, as Paul’s authorized representative, was very probably the first person to explain to an assembled church Paul’s letter to the Romans.

(To see our detailed response to Mike’s Part 4 video, go to www.bit.ly/3JDVRiB for part A and www.bit.ly/3X08GXx for part B.)

#5, Apostles and Junia

Part 5 video (length, 1hr17mins), Mike’s title and strapline:

Were Women Apostles in the New Testament?

MARY THE APOSTLE?

Our summary:

**Misunderstands “apostles”, and downgrades Junia by advancing a very improbable interpretation of Romans 16:7**

Mary Magdalene

Mike strongly criticizes Tom Wright for his description of Mary Magdalene as “apostle to the apostles”. Owing to lack of background knowledge and lack of research skills, Mike is apparently unaware that this description of Mary Magdalene has been in use for more than a thousand years.

By commissioning Mary to announce his resurrection to his disciples (John 20:17-18), Jesus demonstrated that women could be heralds of his resurrection, including to men, and this was played out in the early church in various ways.

Chrysostom believed that in his own day only men should lead, because of women’s incapacity, but he was aware that the ministries of women were more expansive in New Testament times, which he viewed as exceptional. He speaks of the achievements of Junia the apostle. He speaks of Mary of Rome as a teacher with an itinerant ministry. He speaks of “Priscilla, Persis and the rest”, whose business was “to spread the word.”⁴⁵

Junia

Paul commends Junia the apostle in Romans 16:7.

Mike rightly concedes that Junia was indeed a woman, not, as some have claimed, a man named ‘Junias’.

However, Mike believes that she was not an apostle but was merely “well known to the apostles” (ESV, NET). This interpretation rests mainly on two idiosyncratic scholarly articles.

As we have mentioned, Mike frankly admits he is not qualified to arbitrate the issues of Greek translation at play here, but he does it anyway, and promotes the articles.

But their reasoning is misconceived, they ignore the context of Paul’s remarks, they downplay the testimony of native Greek speakers concerning Paul’s meaning, and they ignore Chrysostom’s independent knowledge of Junia as an apostle.

To accept Mike’s view that Junia was not an apostle, it is necessary to believe in a highly improbable historical scenario, in which Church Fathers blundered into accepting her apostleship despite being firmly opposed to women’s leadership and public speaking in their own day. A wide scholarly consensus rightly affirms that Paul commends Junia as an outstanding apostle. The ESV, the NET and Mike are outliers.

In case he is wrong, Mike has a fallback claim: if Junia was an apostle, she probably ministered mainly to women, without exercising authority over men. But he does not perceive the weakness of this claim. It gives the word “apostle” a meaning that it does not have in the New Testament. It is textually and historically unjustified.

No one supposes that Junia was on a par with the Twelve primary apostles, who had a unique function. Rather, she was a pioneering apostle like Barnabas and Silas. If we are to be faithful to the relevant sense in which the term ‘apostle’ is used in Scripture, we must infer that she exercised spiritual authority over the churches which she was instrumental in establishing.

The Twelve Apostles

Mike mistakenly believes that Jesus’s choice of the Twelve shows that the highest ongoing spiritual leadership in the church is reserved for men.

But the Twelve – as twelve, free, Jewish men – are not presented as a template for future ongoing leadership. They had a special function. Mike seems to be unaware of the standard evangelical understanding. Jesus’ choice of twelve Jewish men served a specific, symbolic purpose at a particular moment in redemptive history, showing that Jesus was reconstituting Israel around himself.

And Junia’s service as a pioneering apostle is evidence against Mike’s mistaken belief.

(To see our detailed response to Mike’s Part 5 video, go to www.bit.ly/3mMssJV.)

#6, Some concessions

Part 6 video (length, 2hr13mins), Mike’s title and strapline:

Things I Didn’t Know as a Complementarian

THE NEGLECTED SCRIPTURES

Our summary:

**Mike distances himself from some more extreme positions**

We have not written a response to Mike’s Part 6 video, because there are more important matters to focus on.

#7, Galatians 3:28

Part 7 video (length, 1hr53mins), Mike’s title and strapline:

The Egalitarian “Silver Bullet” Bible Verse

NO MALE AND FEMALE IN CHRIST?

Our summary:

**Makes a valid correction, but misses the true significance of Galatians 3:28**

In the ESV (as used by Mike), Galatians 3:28 says:

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

The basic point that Mike makes in his Part 7 video is that this verse is not an “egalitarian silver bullet”, definitively establishing that eldership in the local church is open to women.

We agree with that basic point.

However, his video paints a substantially misleading picture of how egalitarians generally view Galatians 3:28, for in reality the silver bullet view is a minority position. And he misses the full significance of what Paul says.

A close look at the context shows what Paul is teaching. The Galatians, as one in Christ, have-

a new identity (‘sons of God’, inheriting God’s promised new creation),
a new worth (no one is now second class because of their ethnicity, social position or gender), and
a new purpose (to be transformed into the likeness of Jesus Christ).

In the light of this oneness of identity, oneness of worth, and oneness of purpose, it looks implausible that women, any more than Greeks or slaves, should be barred from leadership in the new community of those who are one in Christ.

So, this text is important to take into account, but it is not a silver bullet that ends the discussion.

(To see our detailed response to Mike’s Part 7 video, go to www.rb.gy/2qoig3.)

#8, Background to Paul’s “head” metaphor

Part 8 video (length, 1hr38mins), Mike’s title and strapline:

Male Headship: Is it REALLY Biblical?

AM I THE “HEAD” OF MY WIFE?

Our summary:

**Misreads scholarship, misrepresents history, misreads lexicons, and sets up an unsound approach to Ephesians 5 and 1 Corinthians 11**

There is probably just one instance where Paul calls a husband the “head” of his wife – Ephesians 5:23. It is the only instance that Mike himself regards as definite, since he acknowledges Paul may not be referring to husbands when he uses the “head” metaphor in 1 Corinthians 11:3, and there are no other possible instances.

But Mike’s teaching notes for the Part 8 video say:

Paul calls a husband the “head” of his wife numerous times.

Why would he write that incorrect statement in his teaching notes? It suggests his thinking is clouded by strong enthusiasm for his concept of male headship.⁴⁶

Meaning depends on context, but Mike proceeds backwards. First, he looks outside the two passages to determine the metaphorical meaning, then he plugs his chosen meaning into the two passages and tries to read them in line with it.

His approach goes like this:

In his Part 8 video, he looks at ancient medicine, other Bible passages, church history and lexicons, and concludes that the metaphorical meaning of “head” is “authority over”.
Then, in his Part 9 video, he plugs that chosen meaning into Ephesians 5:23, disregarding the context, the flow of Paul’s argument, and Paul’s own explanation of “head” in that passage.
Then, in his Part 10 video, he plugs that meaning into 1 Corinthians 11:3, disregarding the problem that it does not fit the flow of Paul’s argument in the passage and creates multiple difficulties, which Mike ignores.

In the Part 8 video, Mike makes four claims about the head metaphor, all of which are designed to establish the meaning “authority over”. But all four claims are misleading or mistaken.

Claim 1 is that common medical thought in New Testament times supports the metaphorical meaning of “head” as “authority over”.

This claim is misleading, because it is a gross over-simplification. It was possible to use the Greek word for “head” metaphorically in that sense in the first century. But the factual picture is much more complex, offering multiple possibilities. Mike’s research into medical history is deficient. The head was understood to have a number of functions, including the supply of nourishment to the body.

Claim 2 focuses on Bible passages other than Ephesians 5 and 1 Corinthians 11. The claim is that Paul’s metaphorical and contextual use of “head” in relation to both Jesus and husbands implies authority.

Again, this is misleading. Paul’s metaphors are not uniform. In the five examples from Colossians 1 and 2 and Ephesians 1 and 4, authority is associated with Paul’s head metaphor in some instances and not in others. No firm conclusion can be drawn from this data about Paul’s meaning in Ephesians 5:23 or 1 Corinthians 11:3.

Mike’s arguments in support of claim 2 include radical misreading and misunderstanding of egalitarian scholarship. He is highly critical of egalitarian scholars Ronald Pierce and Elizabeth Kay, writing in chapter 6 of Discovering Biblical Equality(3^rd edn, 2021). In a classic example of strawmanning and partisan thinking, he comprehensively misreads and misunderstands what they write, turning it into nonsense, which he then makes a big play of rebutting. He also invents some additional imaginary criticisms, which have no basis at all in the chapter. Without any awareness of the irony, he makes a big point about seeing serious errors by egalitarian scholars “over and over again” (Part 8, 0hr43mins). In our response, under the heading “Mike’s radical misreading of Pierce and Kay”, we identify 14 mistakes in Mike’s treatment of what they write.

In a classic example of avoidance, he fails to address their main point, which is:

Anyone who reads Ephesians 5 can see that Paul does not instruct the husband to exercise authority over his wife.

But somehow, Mike’s thinking and reasoning is so clouded that he does not perceive this straightforward point.

Mike’s claim 3 is that “Church history totally supports headship implying authority”.⁴⁷

Mike makes this extravagant claim after examining just one Church Father. It is historically false. He has not carried out the needed research. Even a brief review of what Greek Church Fathers wrote shows a division of opinion on the meaning of the head metaphor. There were early Greek commentators (Cyril of Alexandria, Eusebius, and others) who understood kephalē (head) in 1 Corinthians 11:3 as a metaphor for ‘source’, not for ‘authority over’.

Claim 4 is that lexical study of kephalē strongly supports the authority implication.

This claim is not correct. Our response lists 15 Greek lexicons, from the 12^th century to the 21^st century, which give the metaphorical sense “source” for kephalē. Moreover, Mike’s analysis loses sight of the real purpose of consulting lexicons in this context, which is to see what help we might get from reviewing metaphorical uses of kephalē prior to Paul – and the evidence shows that the meaning “source” for a “head” metaphor definitely existed in Greek prior to Paul.

Mike’s whole approach is faulty. He reaches a premature conclusion about the meaning of “head”, a conclusion which is itself erroneously based on inadequate and faulty research. Since “head” metaphors could be understood in more than one way, the only way of discovering Paul’s particular meaning in the two passages, Ephesians 5 and 1 Corinthians 11, is to examine carefully, without preconceptions, what Paul writes in those passages.

(To see our detailed response to Mike’s Part 8 video, go to www.bit.ly/3RwliET.)

#9, Mutuality in marriage

Part 9 video (length, 3hr9mins), Mike’s title and strapline:

Have We Misunderstood “Wives Submit”?

WIFELY SUBMISSION OR MUTUAL SUBMISSION?

Our summary:

**A disappointing demonstration of how to wrongly handle Scripture**

The question in Mike’s title is: Have We Misunderstood “Wives Submit”? Our response is yes, Mike has misunderstood ‘wives submit’.

He believes there is a God-ordained authority imbalance in the marriage relationship. But he mis-handles and misinterprets 1 Corinthians 7, Ephesians 5, and 1 Peter 3:1-7. Paul and Peter teach equality and mutual submission in Christian marriage.

1 Corinthians 7

Mike’s examination of 1 Corinthians 7 is superficial and flawed. His approach vividly illustrates that he has not learned how to think and reason in a non-partisan way.

This is the longest chapter in the New Testament about the relations of men and women in regard to marriage. For that reason, it is very important. Yet Mike spends less than 30 seconds addressing egalitarian views on 1 Corinthians 7, and in total, he spends only three minutes on it.

Again, he fails to read accurately in context. He considers only three verses, verses 3-5. He distorts the meaning of Scripture by treating the plain language of these verses about marital authority as an anomalous exception – and gives no reason at all for doing so. And he misreads them as relevant only to sexual relations in marriage, even though Paul expressly teaches here about joint prayer and about joint decision-making.

This is the only passage in the New Testament which speaks expressly of authority in marriage – and it specifies the husband’s and the wife’s authority with identical words. Paul is unmistakably teaching equality of authority in marriage. The whole chapter supports this, but Mike has not yet learned how to read accurately in context.

It is the only passage in the New Testament which explicitly teaches how decisions should be taken in marriage: by mutual consent.

Paul’s teaching shows that husband and wife should live in gracious, mutual submission. 1 Corinthians 7 stands in direct contradiction of Mike’s asymmetrical view of marriage.

Ephesians 5

Mike interprets Ephesians 5 as supporting his complementarian view.

To understand what Paul writes in this passage, and especially to interpret his head-and-body metaphor in verse 23, it is necessary to take the precautions of considering the whole context, looking closely at the exact words, tracing Paul’s train of thought, considering his reasons for writing, and taking a Christ-centered canonical approach. Mike does not take any of these steps.

He makes some foundational mistakes:

He misunderstands the meaning of Paul’s word for ‘submit’. This leads him to misinterpret what Paul writes.
He starts his exposition in mid-sentence, which disables him from understanding the context and accurately tracing Paul’s train of thought.
He does not pay close attention to Paul’s Greek text but instead relies mainly on an English translation. This leads to multiple errors of understanding.
He ignores Paul’s own explanation of his ‘head’ metaphor, as applied to the husband.

As we mentioned when reviewing his Part 8 video, Mike does not perceive the plain fact that Paul does not instruct husbands to exercise authority over their wives. Nor is there such an instruction anywhere in the Bible.

Mike’s interpretation is in conflict with-

the mutual submission described in Ephesians 5:21,
the nature of the submission commended in Ephesians 5:22, 24 (of the same kind as in 5:21),
Paul’s own explanation of his head-body metaphor in Ephesians 5:23 (‘savior of the body’),
the first word of Ephesians 5:24 (alla – ‘but’, introducing a contrast),
the nature of Paul’s instructions to husbands in Ephesians 5:25-33a, which are about humble, loving service and which say nothing about exercising authority, and
Paul’s use of Genesis in Ephesians 5:31, where he cites Genesis 2:24 – which is a statement about unity, not about authority.

We conclude that Mike’s interpretation of Ephesians 5 (and likewise of Colossians 3:18-19 and of Titus 2:5) is not correct. God has not placed husbands in higher authority over their wives. A godly marriage is a relationship of mutual submission and mutual love.

While both husbands and wives are called to love and respect each other, Paul’s distinctive emphases to wives (respect) and to husbands (love) reflect the practical situations for which he is writing.

Paul calls upon first-century Christian husbands to let go of their legal and social privileges and voluntarily to take the lowest place of humble service to their wives, following the example of Christ’s humble service to his body, the church. Still today, the husband should model the love of Christ by continually taking the initiative to step out in humble, self-sacrificial service to his wife.

1 Peter 3

Mike interprets 1 Peter 3:1-7 as supporting his own view. In doing so, he makes multiple mistakes and misreads what Peter says.

When Mike insists on his interpretation, that Peter is endorsing a God-given one-way authority of husband over wife, Mike is adding to Scripture a reason for wives’ submission which Peter does not give. Because he has not learned to read accurately in context and to think and reason in a non-partisan way, he does not perceive that he is adding to Scripture.

1 Peter 3:7 is not a call to Christian husbands to exercise authority over their wives. When we study Peter’s exact words and read them in the context of his train of thought (which Mike doesn’t do), this is certain, beyond any doubt. If the husband seeks to exercise authority over his wife, rather than humbly honoring her as a co-heir of God, their prayers will be hindered.

Peter’s view of marriage is fully consistent with the equality and mutual submission seen in Paul’s letters, in 1 Corinthians 7 and in Ephesians 5. If we are to be obedient to the Lord, those of us who are married will put that vision into practice in our own marriages.

(To see our detailed response to Mike’s Part 9 video, go to www.bit.ly/3l8CmVv.)

#10, A mirage of authoritative male headship (1 Corinthians 11)

Part 10 video (length, 6hr46mins), Mike’s title and strapline:

All The Head Covering Debates (1 Cor 11)

THE HEAD COVERING CONTROVERSY

Our summary:

**Mike’s interpretation is in conflict with Paul’s actual words**

In 1 Corinthians 11:2-16, Paul gives some instructions for men and women praying and prophesying. In those instructions, he places no restriction on the scope of how women may minister in the Church.

Given that there is no restriction here on the scope of women’s ministry, why is this passage is discussed as part of the debate about men and women? It is because complementarians interpret it as support for their concept of God-ordained male authority.

In a very long video (nearly 7 hours), Mike interprets this passage as teaching authoritative male headship.

But Mike hesitates over whether he should say that the passage is about the authority of men over women or about the authority of husbands over wives. That question presents him with a dangerous dilemma:

If he says that Paul’s concern is about an authority-relationship of husbands and wives, derived from creation, his interpretation of 1 Corinthians 11 collapses into obvious nonsense. Verse 12 cannot sensibly be translated to say: “For as the wife originates from the husband, so also the husband has his birth through the wife.”
But if Mike says that Paul’s concern is about an authority-relationship of men and women, derived from creation, then that relationship should be applied across all of life, putting all women under the authority of all men with whom they interact, which he is rightly reluctant to do, because Scripture does not support that application.

This unacceptable dilemma points to the fact that his male-authority interpretation is mistaken.

In brief, here are the specific problems of not looking at context and of partisan thinking in what he says:

Mike’s interpretation is in stark conflict with what Paul teaches earlier in the same letter, in 1 Corinthians 7, where husband and wife have the same authority over each other. Mike does not offer a plausible answer to this difficulty.
The meaning of the metaphor in 1 Corinthians 11 verse 3 can only be determined by closely examining Paul’s train of thought in this passage (11:2-16); but that is the very thing that Mike does not do. His predetermined idea about the meaning of ‘head’, derived from faulty analysis in his Part 8 and 9 videos, is his starting point for interpreting Paul’s teaching. That is a fundamental error of method.
The order of the couplets in verse 3 is consistent with the ancient interpretation ‘source’ and inconsistent with ‘authority over’. Mike does not address this difficulty.
It is agreed on all sides that verse 3 drives Paul’s discussion. If ‘head’ means ‘source’ in verse 3, Paul uses each couplet successively in his argument. But if ‘head’ means ‘authority over’, the third couplet lies unused by Paul. Mike does not address this difficulty.
In the express words of the passage, Paul does not mention the authority of Christ over man, man over woman, or God over Christ, but he does mention the authority that a woman ought to have. If ‘head’ means ‘authority over’, the necessary clues to the meaning of Paul’s metaphor are absent. Compared with the express words, Mike’s interpretation is topsy-turvy. Mike does not address this difficulty.
Verses 8-9 are about the original sources and purposes of men and women in the creation story. Mike’s argument that verses 8-9 teach male authority is not supported by satisfactory reasoning. He makes an unwarranted leap from the Woman’s purpose to the Man’s authority.
For a male-authority interpretation to work, verse 10 has to be about the woman’s obligation to have something on her head as a symbol that she is under a man’s authority. But the express words of verse 10 are directly against that interpretation. The verse can only be interpreted in that way by inappropriately translating epi as ‘on’, by inserting extra words which are not in the Greek (‘a symbol of’ or ‘a sign of’), and by unprecedentedly reversing the meaning of exousia (‘authority’), so that it refers to the subjection of the person who ought to have it, rather than to their authority. Mike offers four reasons in support of those extreme interpretive acrobatics, but all four are inadequate. He relies on Thiselton, but he omits to tell his audience that Thiselton is firmly against his interpretation of the passage!
In Paul’s original text, the relationship of verse 11 to verse 10 is incompatible with a male-authority-over-women interpretation. The incompatibility was so clear to scribes living in a patriarchal culture that they reversed the order of Paul’s clauses in verse 11. Mike does not address this difficulty.

In short, from verse 2 to verse 16, there is not even one express word in the text about men’s authority over women. Yet again, Mike is building a doctrine on supposed implication, rather than on the express words. The hierarchical-complementarian interpretation, which portrays this passage as being about authoritative male headship, is a mirage. It is based on faulty reasoning and lack of close attention to the text. It is contrary to the words of Scripture.

In rejecting a view that he disagrees with (the view that head coverings for women prevent angelic lust), Mike says:

We should stick to what’s there, if possible, before adding new ideas not present in the text. (5hr10mins)

But he does not apply that standard to his own view. He adds into verse 10 new words which are not in the text (“a sign of” authority).⁴⁸ No word meaning “sign” appears anywhere in the passage. Mike does not perceive his partisan inconsistency.

In 1 Corinthians 11, Paul teaches about the created differentiation of men and women and insists on honorable behavior. But he places no limitation on the scope of women’s participation. Men and women contribute together, praying and prophesying. This is an expression of their spiritual unity in Christ. The male-authority interpretation repeatedly collides with the actual words of the text.

(To see our detailed response to Mike’s Part 10 video, go to www.bit.ly/3JV6kpD.)

#11, 1 Corinthians 14 doesn’t silence women

Part 11 video (length, 3hr16mins), Mike’s title and strapline:

5 Views on “Women Keep Silent” (1 Cor 14:35-36)

“WOMEN BE SILENT”

Our summary:

**A one-sided presentation, which ignores fatal objections to Mike’s interpretation and does not engage with strong evidence that vv34-35 do not express Paul’s own view**

Mike’s title has a typo. His Part 11 video is about 1 Corinthians 14 verses 34-35, not 35-36. In the ESV, as used by Mike, those verses say:

[34] the women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says. [35] If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.

The verses state three times, in emphatic language, that women must keep silent and not speak when the church is assembled together.

Trying to understand these verses in their context presents numerous difficulties, not least that they appear to be in strong conflict with Paul’s surrounding words, which give instructions for both men’s and women’s vocal contributions to corporate worship.

Mike’s video reviews five proposed solutions. He rejects four of them and argues that the real intent of the disputed verses is to prohibit women from taking part in weighing prophecies which are spoken in the assembly.

But Mike’s chosen solution is not a realistically viable interpretation of the text. It is in stark conflict with what the text actually says. There are multiple fatal objections to his proposal, which Mike does not answer. In regard to five of them, he shows no awareness that the objections even exist.

Mike seems unaware of the evident unreasonableness of his proposed solution.

If you were writing a letter to your church, with the intention of instructing them that women should not weigh prophecies, would you try to get your meaning across by not actually saying so, and instead by stating a total, unqualified ban on any speaking by women in church?

And would you state the total, unqualified ban three times, in differing words, for maximum emphasis?

And would you indicate, as the sole example of the application of your instruction about not weighing prophecies, that women who desire to learn must not ask questions in church but should ask their husbands at home?

And, knowing that there were women prophets active in your church, would you write: “Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others weigh what is said”?

We think the obvious answer to all these questions is ‘no’. Mike’s interpretation collides with the actual words in the text in every possible respect. It makes Paul into a writer who is so careless or incompetent that he says something radically different from what he intends to convey. But Mike doesn’t perceive these objections.

On the assumption that the disputed words are original to Paul, no satisfactory solution for the interpretive issues has yet been found – unless perhaps Paul is quoting opponents at Corinth.

However, one of the proposed solutions is that the two verses do not belong in Paul’s letter: they originated as a comment that someone wrote in the margin of an early copy, which got added into the main text by mistake, and in different manuscripts it was added in at two different places. Mike calls this the ‘interpolation’ view.

To assess this view, it is necessary to be familiar with the principles of textual criticism, by which errors in ancient handwritten copies are weeded out.

Mike rejects this view, but he does so without ever engaging with the evidence for it, or with the writings of scholars who have concluded in favor of it. When listening to his video, we kept wondering when he would get to discussing the evidence, and interacting with the scholars who have concluded that the verses were incorporated by mistake, but he never does. He makes the basic errors of only considering one side of the discussion and of not looking at the evidence for himself. He has not yet learned how to think and reason in a non-partisan way.

Trapped within a partisan mindset, Mike questions the motives of those who hold the interpolation view, which he criticizes as “reckless” (0hr47mins).

Mike’s criticism is inappropriate and unwise. Gordon Fee, a devout, Bible-believing scholar who held the interpolation view, was considered one of the finest textual critics of the twentieth century, as Mike knows.⁴⁹ Since Mike does not have Fee’s expertise in textual criticism (or, as far as we know, any expertise in textual criticism), and since he has not looked at the evidence in favor of the interpolation view, he has no basis for making his criticism. The right thing to do would be to withdraw it.

We do understand the commonly expressed concern that removing the two verses may seem just too convenient a way of solving the interpretive difficulties. That was what we thought ourselves, until we examined both sides of the discussion, and saw that the interpolation view is the most probable solution, based on the best available evidence.

Mike states with forcefulness that he “cannot stress enough” how much the interpolation view would put much of Scripture into question, because the same approach could be used to dispose of any unwanted passage (0hr48mins).

That is groundless polemics – an entirely false scare-statement, which shows the extent of Mike’s ignorance of the textual issues. The interpolation view, as advanced by Gordon Fee and Philip Payne, depends upon the application of the ordinary principles of textual criticism. Moreover, if Mike had read either of those two scholars, he would have seen that the characteristics of the manuscript evidence are unique in this particular case. Removing the two interpolated verses does not threaten any genuine passage of Scripture.

In sum, this video is a complete fail:

It is a fail as regards the interpretation that Mike puts forward, because he does not answer fatal objections to it but simply ignores them.
It is a fail as regards Mike’s rejection of the interpolation view, because Mike reaches his conclusion without considering the weighty evidence and scholarship in favor of it.

In our view, Bible-readers can be confident that it is not Paul who wants to silence women in 1 Corinthians 14:34-35.

(To see our detailed response to Mike’s Part 11 video, go to www.bit.ly/3naLVUL. We have included a guide so that you will be able to see some of the most important evidence for yourself.)

#12, In 1 Timothy 2 Paul deals with false teaching

Part 12 video (length, 11hr24mins), Mike’s title and strapline:

ALL The Debates Over 1 Tim 2:11-15 … (it took me a year to make this)

WOMEN CAN’T “TEACH OR HAVE AUTHORITY”?

Our summary:

**Mistakes, false perspectives and faulty methods lead to an interpretation that is in conflict with Paul’s actual words**

By virtue of its great length, this one video constitutes more than a quarter of Mike’s whole series on Women in Ministry. It makes sense that he allocates so much time to this passage, since it is probably the most important text for complementarianism.

Mike claims he has carried out a thorough review of all the debates over the interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:11-15. But despite the great length of the video, his claim of thoroughness is thoroughly mistaken. The lack of thoroughness is disappointing.

He displays false perspectives and faulty methods. He repeatedly misrepresents and strawmans the arguments of writers with whom he disagrees. He avoids addressing their real case. He omits to pay close attention to Paul’s train of thought and the context of Paul’s remarks. He makes a false separation between combating false teaching and promoting right teaching and living. He leaves entirely unaddressed some questions of central importance.

In 1 Timothy 2:12, according to the controversial translation in the ESV, Paul writes:

I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.

The Greek word translated here as “exercise authority” is the rare verb authenteō. Remarkably, Mike claims that the meaning is very clear, even though the Bible versions on Bible Gateway offer twenty different English translations of this word and Mike spends 4½ hours trying to establish his favored meaning. In Mike’s view, Paul is here referring to the kind of authority exercised by a church elder.

Quite a few translations render the verb as “have authority”. Mike says:

The center of this whole debate boils down to this one question: In 1 Timothy 2:12, is the phrase “have authority” a wrong translation? (3hr36mins).

Every step of Mike’s argument for his preferred translation is a mis-step. His discussion is full of mistakes – errors of reading, of fact, and of reasoning. There are many gaps in his research. He has gone off on tangents by asking himself the wrong questions. He has not addressed major issues that he needed to address.

Mike does not show any relevant historical example of authenteō being used or understood in a sense suitable to the function of a church elder. His earliest pertinent evidence for his preferred meaning is in a passage from the Church Father, Origen, two centuries after Paul. Mike enthusiastically it describes as “super cool” and wants his audience to rely on it. Yet, in self-contradiction, Mike himself argues in this video and in his Part 11 video that Origen’s interpretation of Paul in this passage is not reliable but is definitely wrong – and we agree.

So, Mike’s position is that we should rely on what Origen says, which is “super cool”, and at the same time reject it because it’s definitely wrong.

Near to the time of Paul, there are just two clear examples of this word being used in a sense that could fit into 1 Timothy 2:12. In both examples, it has connotations of pressure and of decisive influence. In the first example, it refers to strong-arm negotiating tactics to overpower another party and force them to back down. In the second example it is used of astrological influence, where a powerful planet dominates or overmasters other heavenly bodies. Those meanings support a non-complementarian reading of verse 12. Mike does not perceive that they are not suitable meanings for the exercise of pastoral authority by an elder. On what Mike considers to be the center of the whole debate, his interpretation is unsupported.

Paul must view the teaching in verse 12 negatively, because he is not permitting it. But what is he negative about? Is his restriction aimed at a faithful woman who holds to the truth, but who teaches it to men (which we can call Scenario T, for True teaching), or is it aimed at a misbehaving woman (as implicitly described in v9) who is mixed up in false teaching (Scenario F, False teaching)? Mike needs to demonstrate from the context that Paul’s concern is Scenario T. But Mike does not identify any solid contextual evidence of this.

And why does Paul step over every normal word for elders’ functions and use instead this very rare word authenteō? Mike offers no answer. Paul must have a particular reason for using this word. The only answer we know of is that Paul is dealing with a particular situation of false teaching (Scenario F), and this rare word is found in Hellenic astrology, a likely element in the women’s beliefs.

In the context, Paul himself signals that in this passage he is giving instructions for dealing with false teaching. In Chapter 1, Paul’s concern is certainly about dealing with false teaching, because he expressly says so. Then in 2:1, 2:8 and 2:9 Paul links his remarks to the same topic with the clear signposts “therefore …”, “therefore …”, “Likewise …”. He is still on this topic through verse 15. So, Mike’s interpretation is not faithful to Scripture because it is in conflict with Paul’s express words. He does not read accurately in context. This is a fatal defect.

Mike should have seen this central problem for his view spelled out in the egalitarian book Discovering Biblical Equality,⁵⁰ in Andrew’s book,⁵¹ and in other places, yet in his 11½ hours of video and his 120 pages of teaching notes he never mentions it or addresses it. He ignores it.

In verses 13-14, Paul goes on to refer to the story of Adam and Eve. Is Paul giving an Old Testament illustration to support what he has just said in verse 12, or is he appealing to a creation principle about the authority of men over women?

Mike assumes Paul is appealing to a creation principle, but does not offer any reasons for making that assumption. And his interpretation collapses in self-contradiction. If Paul is truly appealing to a creation principle of men’s authority over women, then that principle should be applied in all walks of life – but Mike vehemently rejects that conclusion.

For verse 14, he makes a novel and opaque proposal, which lacks any discernible connection to Paul’s actual words.

On the other side of the debate, verses 13-14 are readily explainable as a supporting illustration – a warning of the seriousness of false teaching, which deceived Eve and led to dire consequences.

There is no positive evidence in Paul’s letter for the existence of Scenario T in Ephesus – that is, for godly women teaching God’s truth to men when they should not do so. This scenario would require that Paul addresses the ungodly behavior of some rich women in verses 9-10, then suddenly and without any signal switches in verses 11-12 to challenging some quite different women – godly women who are unaffected by the false teaching but who are making the mistake of thinking that it is right for them to teach men in the church. Such a switch is not plausible.

The lack of evidence for Scenario T invites a comparison with Mike’s own reason for rejecting the traditional idea that verse 14 is about women being more easily deceived than men:

The idea that all women in general are more easily deceived than men is a brand-new idea. … … It’s totally brand new in the middle of 1 Timothy 2! (9hr28mins)

By “brand new”, Mike means: if this is really what Paul is thinking, it emerges suddenly out of nowhere, completely unconnected to the context. That shows it is very unlikely to be what Paul is thinking.

If Mike were thinking in a non-partisan way, he would apply the same reasoning to verse 12, like this:

The idea that Paul is restricting faithful women from teaching Christian truth and exercising authority is a brand-new idea. It’s totally brand new in the middle of 1 Timothy 2! It emerges suddenly out of nowhere, completely unconnected to the context. That shows it is very unlikely to be what Paul is thinking.

In addition, if Paul is not addressing a situation-specific problem but is stating a general rule about women which applies to all churches in all times and places, why does he introduce it with the counter-intuitive expression “I am not permitting” or “I do not permit” (Greek ouk epitrepō)? This is an unlikely and wholly unprecedented choice for stating a general rule. Mike does not answer this question.

Because we always strive to believe the best of our brother Mike, we did not expect crucial parts of his Part 12 video to be as poor as they are. We did not expect the magnitude of his unwitting mistakes and inconsistencies, the shallowness of the analysis which he offered, or his groundless criticisms of the motives of those with whom he disagrees.

Mike is convinced that, where fellow-believers do not share his interpretation of 1 Timothy, their objective is to “pull away from”, “work… around”, “get away from”, “get around”, or “take it away from” what the Bible teaches – he says he doesn’t “know how else to look at it”.⁵² Because he is trapped in partisan thinking, he is unable to imagine that some may disagree with him because they are committed to the teaching of Jesus and his apostles – committed to taking it seriously and handling it carefully, and not leaping to unjustified conclusions by taking proof texts out of context and by ignoring the writer’s own express words which provide signposts to the intended meaning.

Our conclusion is that Paul is not stating a general rule that faithful women must not teach or exercise authority in the church. He’s insisting that a woman caught up in false teaching must learn, and he is not permitting her to lead a man astray. Instead, she should learn with quiet humility, and walk with Christ our Savior, in faith, love, holiness and self-control.

(To see our response to the part of Mike’s Part 12 video which discusses the meaning of authenteō, go to www.terranwilliams.com/why-mike-winger-is-wrong-about-authenteo-in-1-timothy-212-and-why-it-matters-2/. To see our overall response to Mike’s Part 12 video, go to https://terranwilliams.com/the-debates-over-1-timothy-2/.)

#13, It is for freedom that Christ has set us free

Part 13 video (length, 4hr21mins), Mike’s title and strapline:

Everything Women Can and Can’t Do According to the Bible

THE VIDEO YOU’VE ALL BEEN ASKING FOR

Our summary:

**Mike’s new Leviticus for women, full of complexity and harmful uncertainties, and where his application torpedoes his interpretation**

In Part 13, Mike rounds off his Women in Ministry series by spending nearly 4½ hours trying to justify and explain his practical guidance on what a woman is or is not permitted to do.

He summarizes his teaching as three pillars, which he then tries to apply. In his own words, the pillars are:

#1: Male headship and female submission in marriage.

#2: Elders’ positions and functions are for men only.

#3: Women’s status as image bearers and sons of God is inviolable.

Whether intentionally or unintentionally, this Part 13 video shows the reality of complementarianism: it has little to do with men and women being complementary. It is mainly about trying to define restrictions on women. It’s about a bundle of rules that apply to women and not to men. Mike’s teaching is a new Leviticus, but for women only. He does not propose any complementary restrictions that apply to men.

As part of pillar #3, Mike accepts that God has made women equally capable and equally as gifted as men, and that their gifts include gifts of leadership and of teaching. This raises the question, why is it supposedly good in God’s eyes to restrict women whom God himself has made equally capable and equally gifted? Mike does not venture an explanation.

Especially in Parts 2 and 12, there was inconsistency in Mike’s position. If Genesis 2 and 1 Timothy 2 truly teach a creation principle of men’s authority over women, then that principle should be applied in all walks of life, but Mike is clear that Scripture does not support that. In his view, there are no “hard and fast rules” about male authority in wider society beyond marriage and the church. In Part 13, he finally notices the inconsistency between his interpretation and his application, but is unable to resolve it. He faintly suggests that leadership in wider society is less important, but that is not credible. Even if true, it would not be an answer, since God’s design should be honored and obeyed in all areas of life. Mike’s application (no hard and fast rules in wider society) shows that his interpretation must be wrong.

In addition, the complexity and uncertainty of Mike’s rules for women are problematic. He identifies practical questions about what, in complementarianism, women may or may not do, and he gives vague answers.

Devout women have testified how the contested uncertainties of complementarian restrictions have a cramping effect on their use of their gifts. In his Part 4 video, Mike mentions that he has observed this himself. He tries to distance himself from these problems by attributing them to something which he sees in the complementarian teaching of John Piper, which he calls “paranoid masculinity”.⁵³ While he is right to disagree with Piper, he doesn’t perceive that it is in the very nature of complementarianism to harm women in the use of their gifts. Because in complementarian circles the height of the stained-glass ceiling for women is contested and uncertain, devout women habitually stoop, continually concerned about whether they might be overstepping their proper “role”.

Complementarianism has no solution for this difficulty. Sincere complementarians have always disagreed among themselves on where the lines of restriction should be drawn, and for as long as complementarianism lasts, they will continue to do so. Their lack of agreement stems from the very nature of complementarianism. Pillars #1 and #2, which are complementarian distortions of Scripture, pull in a different direction from pillar #3, which is biblical. This produces tensions which cannot be definitively resolved.

In this video, Mike claims that egalitarianism harms marriages, but he cites no evidence to support his claim. There is ample research evidence, and it points the other way. Where complementarianism is put into practice by the husband taking responsibility for making marital decisions, marriages are much more likely to end in divorce than the marriages of conservative Christians who make decisions jointly. That is what we should expect from 1 Corinthians 7.

The result of Mike’s teaching is that women are kept under restriction, but to an uncertain extent, which complementarians are unable to define or to agree upon among themselves. This is a recipe for harm, heartache and conflict.

The harms and heartaches are not the results of God’s word, which is sweet to the taste, sweeter than honey to the mouth, and which gives us delight, and enables us to walk about in freedom (Psalm 119: 43, 45, 103, 174).

(To see our detailed response to Mike’s Part 13 video, go to https://terranwilliams.com/what-mike-winger-gets-wrong-on-what-women-cant-do/.)

A word of encouragement for Mike and for our readers

We come back to Mike’s desire to move to an egalitarian position.

It must be a strong desire, for he mentions it many times in the series.⁵⁴ In his Lesson Overview for Part 1, he emphasizes it with capital letters:

To be totally open with you, I actually WANTED to become egalitarian. That may sound strange to some, but I’m just being honest about my motivations.

It is thought-provoking that he has this strong desire. It is all the more intriguing because, having served in complementarian settings, he has had limited opportunities to experience the freedom and delight of gifted women and men working together in leadership and learning from each other as sisters and brothers in Christ.

Mike is not a man who believes in bending to secular culture. The strength of his genuine desire to become egalitarian, in a man in whom the Spirit of Christ dwells, suggests he senses in his heart that there may be something wrong with complementarianism.

Rightly, however, Mike’s desire to move to an egalitarian position was not his only desire. He also says,

I wanted a thorough, biblical, comprehensive view. I wanted to listen to every relevant important debate. And I wanted to really navigate those waters clearly and see how the unity of the Scripture would speak on this issue to me. (Part 3, 1hr52mins)

Putting these desires together, he explains:

I actually wanted to be egalitarian. I was being honest when I said that, but I want even more to just follow Scripture where it leads … (Part 10, 1hr43mins)

His desire to become egalitarian makes good sense in light of his experiences in complementarianism. As mentioned above, he has seen women harmed by John Piper’s version of it.⁵⁵

There is a difficulty here for Mike. He cannot demonstrate that even his own version of complementarianism is good for women. He gets close to admitting this, when he says in his first video:

I’m not going to be God’s PR department. … There’s too much concern that we have for making Christianity palatable … … This video series is for people who want to submit to God. So, that’s the price of entry. You need to be able to say right now, if you’re going to listen to the series: “If the Bible does affirm some form of complementarianism, I will submit to that, and I WILL TRUST THAT IT IS A GOOD THING.” (Part 1, 1hr07mins – 1hr08mins)

It is necessary to “trust” that Mike’s version of complementarianism is “a good thing”, because it cannot be shown to be good, whether from Scripture or by empirical evidence.⁵⁶

Against this background of desire and concern, what is Mike’s explanation for maintaining the position that he started with? He says:

It’s egalitarian scholars that made me stay complementarian. (Part 3, 0hr59mins)

In his Lesson Overview for Part 1, he states:

I went into this study hoping I’d see really strong and thoughtful cases for egalitarian views from top scholars and I saw, over and over again, insufficient evidence, poor reasoning, inconsistent positions, and bad Bible study practices.

He expresses this perception vividly in the final video of his series:

I was, like: man, I kind of hope that the Bible is egalitarian, going into this study, and that these arguments are convincing to me. And as I read through the scholars’ works, and checked their footnotes, and looked at the evidence, I was shocked! I was shocked at how bad the arguments were. (Part 13, 0hr19mins)

When you dig into their actual reasons for their views, it falls apart. It’s a, it’s a school of scholarly thought that, that shouldn’t be. I’m saying this very strongly. I know these are very strong words. That’s my conclusion after my work. Now, if you think I’m wrong, go back and look at my work. (Part 13, 0hr21mins)

We freely admit that there are many errors that can be found in egalitarian scholarship, just as there are many errors that can be found in complementarian scholarship. And we share Mike’s desire to follow Scripture where it leads.

But our overall perspective is very different. Having reviewed Mike’s work, we conclude that his desire to move to an egalitarian position is a good desire, because that would be a move into line with biblical truth. Over some 450 pages of detailed responses to his videos, we have documented (to re-apply his words):

over and over again, insufficient evidence, poor reasoning, inconsistent positions, and bad Bible study practices.

Mike did look over the work of some of the relevant scholars, but he didn’t read thoroughly or accurately or with comprehension. Mike did sometimes check their footnotes, but all too often he did not check them correctly; instead, he misread and misunderstood. Mike did look at the evidence – some of it – but his review was incomplete, sometimes shallow, sometimes uncomprehending. When he was shocked, the true causes of his shock were often his own misunderstandings of what scholars had written and the inadequacies of his research.

Because he has not learned how to think and reason in a non-partisan way, inevitably he remained with the position that he started from.

He was unaware of the shortcomings in his reading, research and reasoning. If he had been aware of them, he would have done something about them. He would have taken steps to acquire more background knowledge and better research skills, to learn how to read accurately in context, and to learn how to think and reason in a non-partisan way.

The good news is that he could still do this, if he chooses to.

And if he did, he would find – as many others have done – that the Bible does not teach complementarianism, and that God’s word to women is altogether more lovely than complementarianism’s sincere but misguided distortions.

We would be delighted to meet him and engage with him, whether online or in person, whether in public or in private.

Like Mike, Terran was formed as a Christian in complementarian settings, and he became a pastor in such a setting. When people in his church questioned the church’s beliefs about women, Terran was commissioned to provide a better defense. For the first time in his life, he really engaged with both sides of the debate. Like others before him, he was surprised to discover that his complementarian position was not biblical. That was not Mike’s experience when he prepared his series on Women in Ministry; but there are reasons for that, which we have laid out in this article.

We want to encourage our readers. Know that the teaching of Scripture is not cramping but life-giving. Know that Jesus Christ, the Lord of love, pours out his Holy Spirit on men and women alike,⁵⁷ to equip them for Christlike living, Christlike service, and Christlike leadership. Tell your Christian brothers and sisters. Tell your friends and family. Share this article with your pastors and teachers.

To Jesus be glory.

Where Mike Winger Went Wrong on Women

Contents

Our message

Mike’s reply to our critiques?

#1, On thinking biblically

The history that makes this topic particularly challenging

Introducing what went wrong

Background knowledge and research skills

Reading accurately in context

How to think and reason in a non-partisan way

Upholding biblical thinking

#2, Men and women created as partners (Genesis 1 – 3)

#3, Women in the Old Testament

Miriam

Deborah

OT priesthood

#4, Leadership and teaching in New Testament churches

Qualifications for elders

Qualifications for women deacons

Women as church hosts

Priscilla

Phoebe

#5, Apostles and Junia

Mary Magdalene

Junia

The Twelve Apostles

#6, Some concessions

#7, Galatians 3:28

#8, Background to Paul’s “head” metaphor

#9, Mutuality in marriage

1 Corinthians 7

Ephesians 5

1 Peter 3

#10, A mirage of authoritative male headship (1 Corinthians 11)

#11, 1 Corinthians 14 doesn’t silence women

#12, In 1 Timothy 2 Paul deals with false teaching

#13, It is for freedom that Christ has set us free

A word of encouragement for Mike and for our readers

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