Notes

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1: An Androcentric Story? Men Everywhere!

2. Among these books are Richard Bauckham, Gospel Women: Studies of the Named Women in the Gospels (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002); Kenneth E. Bailey, Paul Through Mediterranean Eyes: Cultural Studies in 1 Corinthians (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2011); Lynn Cohick, Women in the World of the Earliest Christians: Illuminating Ancient Ways of Life (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009); Lynn H. Cohick and Amy Brown Hughes, Christian Women in the Patristic World: Their Influence, Authority, and Legacy in the Second through Fifth Centuries (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017); Paula Gooder, Phoebe: A Story (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2018); and Jenni Williams, God Remembered Rachel: Women’s Stories in the Old Testament and Why They Matter (London: SPCK, 2014). For women’s perspectives on the Bible see also Catherine Clark Kroeger and Mary J. Evans, eds., The IVP Women’s Bible Commentary (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2001); and Carol Newsom, ed., The Women’s Bible Commentary (London: SPCK, 2014).

15. I am aware that by constantly referring to male and female as made in God’s image and occasionally referring to both male and female together as made in God’s image, this language excludes those who see themselves as neither male nor female. Whereas I am in agreement that we should understand the picture in Genesis as telling us that it is humanity that is made in the image of God, and that this is a preferable expression, this book is dealing with a very specific situation in which expectations of differences in forms of ministry and roles in heterosexual marriage for men and women are rooted in assumptions about differences in sex and gender between male and female. Thus, I will continue to use this language, despite its limitations, to address this particular situation.

18. Witt makes the point that Paul also refers to women as representative figures. Paul uses Hagar and Sarah in Galatians 4 as representatives of the “two covenants of Sinai, the old covenant (‘present Jerusalem’) and the new covenant (‘Jerusalem above’). Nothing in Paul’s typology suggests that either Hagar or Sarah are representative because of their sex. Moreover, that Paul uses female figures as typologically representative undercuts the claim that there is in Scripture a pattern in which male figures are representative of humanity and female figures are not.” William Witt, “Concerning Women’s Ordination: The Argument from Symbolism (Part 2: Transcendence, Immanence and Sexual Typology),” William G. Witt (blog), August 1, 2016, http://willgwitt.org/theology/concerning-womens-ordination-the-argument-from-symbolism-part-2.

Chapter 2: Joining the Story: The Place of Women in God’s Great Plan

Chapter 3: A Woman’s Natural Place: What the Creation Narratives Tell Us

Chapter 4: Talking Heads: The Meaning of Headship

Chapter 5: Balancing Marriage: The Hierarchicalist View

Chapter 6: Redressing the Balance: A Mutualist View of Marriage

Chapter 7: Mistranslations, Misinterpretations, and Misunderstandings: The Dominant Narrative of Male Bias

35. Rodney Stark, “Reconstructing the Rise of Christianity: The Role of Women,” Sociology of Religion 56, no. 3 (1995): 238. This is from a historian’s perspective whose own research tells him that in reality there were many women deacons in the early church, and thus he assumes they were being addressed in this letter. This is an important point. Gary Macy argues in the same way for the evidence for ordained women in the medieval period. He writes, “The memory of ordained women has been nearly erased, and where it survived, it was dismissed as illusion or, worse, delusion. This was no accident of history. This is a history that has been deliberately forgotten, intentionally marginalized, and, not infrequently, creatively explained away. The pages that follow hope to expose this buried treasure, not only to excavate and expose the sources that survive concerning ordained women, but also to shed light on the brave scholars, mostly women, who have been insisting, against the odds, for decades that this is a legacy that should not, and cannot, be lost.” Gary Macy, The Hidden History of Women’s Ordination: Female Clergy in the Medieval West (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 4. For more on this topic, I recommend Philip B. Payne, “1 Timothy 3:1-13 and Titus 1:5-9: May Women Be Overseers and Deacons?” in Man and Woman, One in Christ: An Exegetical and Theological Study of Paul’s Letters (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009), 445-59.