🛡️ The narrow "Biblical Manhood" checklist is failing us. Reclaiming overseer and deacon traits as the blueprint for every disciple.

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Speaker 1: The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast. I'm doctor James Spencer, and through calm, thoughtful theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now onto today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey, everyone, welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian on doctor James Spencer and I'm joined again by doctor Ashisha Varma, and we're continuing our conversation about Biblical manhood and maybe some of the misconceptions that we have about Biblical manhood from differing interpretations and such. Today we're going to jump into a specific text. We're going to look at first Timothy three, specifically Verse Timothy three. We're going to go from verse one all the way down probably to somewhere in thirteen. And in the general idea here is number one that I think these these characteristics that are listed here of overseers and which often translated as deacons, they aren't just male characteristics these are characteristics that are also applied to women in various places. And so if we look at a few of these, like above approach, which is one Timothy three to two, we see that also in one Timothy five seven applied to widows, same Greek word respectable, and first Timothy three two is applied to women in one Timothy two nine, it's often translated as modesty. If we look at able to teach in one Timothy three two, that term isn't isn't applied to women, though women are generally described and portrayed as teaching others in other contexts in like Titus two three. And so we've got all these different things that are sort of piling up that would suggest that these characteristics, this list of characteristics that we're looking at with overseers and diack deacons are not simply male characteristics. It's not as if only the males within the community need to be above approach or sober minded or self controlled, or what have you. And so I think that's important as we think about how to apply these into a biblical manhood perspective. We'll talk a little bit more about that as we go, but probably we want to set the context up of what's going on here in the first place, and to do that, we need to dive a little bit into First Timothy two. But we're going to do that sparingly because First Timothy two really deserves its own episode. So maybe I'll hand that off to you there, Ashish and give you the hot potato for a moment. First Timothy two. What's your perspective on what's going on there? And how would that inform with the way we need to read First Timothy three?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, question, Before I get to that, can I give a second, very related sort of preamble?

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Speaker 3: Right?

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Speaker 2: So, I think you rightly point out that we need to move forward, not making assumptions that because a particular quality is stated towards someone of a particular gender doesn't mean that that's a statement about exclusivity exclusivity toward that gender, or that all times in places require us to think only in terms of that gender.

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Speaker 3: Right, Right.

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Speaker 2: But I think a parallel, parable preamble would be something like being cautious about words and language. And what I mean by that is that we tend very easily, oftentimes because of historical usage, to read what becomes technical terms back into the text. So you know, as if theologian Biblical scholars often accuse us, often rightly, of taking the word justification, which has its own theological baggage through technical conversations quite literally centuries long in the making, and then going to Paul and seeing the word that is often translated as justification to Kaiosune, and reading all that baggage back into it, as if all that was what Paul was getting at, and then going to say, the Book of James, where the word might be used, and reading it there as well. And the caution here is that, first of all, every time Paul uses this word, he may not necessarily be saying the same thing, right right, Never mind, when James uses the word, he may not be thinking, you remember that term that Paul used or is going to use in a future letter, this is what I write. And when we overread that sort of technical language back in, we get ourselves into really just we back ourselves into in terms brit of corners, where we're now stuck. We're stuck, We're stuck in a jail that is a false jail. Right, So, as a mentor of mind, once said, find the open door and push against it and walk out of that.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, well, we can do this with.

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Speaker 3: The words that you just mentioned.

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Speaker 2: So not only is there the gender dynamic that we can be presumptuous of, but additionally we can read a word like episcopas that's translated sometimes as elder, maybe more appropriately as overseer, and diakanos translated as deacon, and see them as specific offices that the church later comes to identify in very particular ways that maybe in the first century aren't so clearly defined in that kind of way.

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Speaker 3: So I think we.

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Speaker 2: Should we should try our best to try to set aside these technicalities. And what I don't mean by that is go to your church and say, these are technicalities that come much after the Bible.

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Speaker 3: They're not from the Bible. Put them away.

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Speaker 2: No, I mean there could be good reasons for their development, but don't just assume one to one, right.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think to that point, if I can add something in there, the translation office of overseer is more interpretive than I think it needs to be. So to your point of piscopaus. It was Lightfoot in his commentary on Philippians in eighteen sixty eight who argue that episcopas and the word for elder are largely just synonyms, and so there's a different Greek word for elder. I'm blanking on what that is right now, but there is a different word. And so here when it's translated off office of overseer and for Timothy three to one, probably a better translation, because office doesn't actually appear right, that's a gloss on episcopass. It's probably better just think of one who aspires to oversight. It has more that force. We take the office out of it. This is someone now who is going to be functioning in a socially relevant role, let's say, but who may not hold a formal office in the way that we think of that today. So you know, they're hired in by a house church and they're appointed to this position and they you know, they have you know, job description with roles and responsibilities they have to fill. It may not be that. It may be more of a position within society that they come to embody and fulfill and that is recognized by the people in that particular context. But this is not like a paid position, a job that someone has. This is now a service that they're performing. And Paul is trying to scope out if you wanted to be an overseer. Here's what your life might look like. And as we talked a little bit before the episode, the diacinos often translated deacon, but that the acinos is found in places like Romans thirteen, where the governing authorities are your diaconos for good. They're God's servant for good. That's really what diaconos is here. And so we have these two sort of an oversight and a servant and they have oddly similar qualifications. Was kind of what we talked about beforehand. So yeah, I think that's a good move. Let's make sure we're not thinking in terms of okay, so what should my pastor what characteristics should my pastor have? Yeah, they probably should have some of these characteristics, but that's not exactly what this passage is on you, right, And.

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Speaker 2: I think as we'll see, really maybe we should all have some of these characteristics.

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Speaker 1: We should probably as some of these characteristics.

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Speaker 3: But more on that later. Yes, so to chapter two.

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Speaker 2: I think that's an important way to set up what's going on in chapter two as it leads into three, because again, it can be very easy to go to chapter two and read what on the face value can come off as very strong declarative judgments that are law like as to what things should look like. Yeah, but we have to understand that this text, like all texts, are written by someone to someone in some place, and that's important in some time. Right, So when we're writing to somebody in some place, you know, quite simply, if we're writing to someone who lives along the equator and we're riding in a way in which we speak very metaphorically in ways that take for granted blistery winter conditions that involve snow and ice, it probably just doesn't communicate right. Very similarly, someone who grows up in the northern reaches of Alaska, for all that TV might help that person understand, and there's a very big gap experientially for that person to understand life around the equator. Now we have some acknowledgment of difference and some ability to recognize these differences because we live in a very connected world, we have an information system. We shouldn't assume that upon the text. So when Paul's writing in chapter two to people in Ephesians, I think fairly it's fairly easy in our situation to jump to, well, you know what Ephesians is going through the people in Antioch understand, But I don't think that's actually a good assumption. And whatever's going on in Ephesis probably relates more to the place of ephesis.

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Speaker 1: Yes, and.

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Speaker 2: That I think is the first and biggest thing to recognize there. When Paul makes these statements that seem really strong and straightforward, he knows his place saying what can I say to you that matters?

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Speaker 3: Right?

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Speaker 2: Think about Paul's own language elsewhere where he says to the Jews, I'm a Jew, to the Gentiles, I'm a gentile, right to those as under the law I'm under the law, and those not under the law as if I'm not under the law, meaning the Torah. So when he addresses these people here, he does set up what appears to be strong gendered boundaries. Right, he says what he doesn't want women to do, he says what he does want men to do. But again, if we think about the world in which Paul is living more broadly, it's a world with very careful, very specific ideas of manhoods. So when we talked about virtue, for instance, to be a virtuous person one had to be a man. It was a gendered claim.

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Speaker 3: Why, well, because.

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Speaker 2: There were certain presumptions about a woman, which meant women cannot be X, Y and z, But it also meant certain kinds of men. Right, So the much she's the most sort of idea of a man, the strong guy, the whole Colgan Randy Savage sort of a person can't be virtuous either. So it's a very careful delineating of that reality. Now one can imagine reactions to that, and one can also imagine pockets of existence in this larger landscape that don't.

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Speaker 3: Operate by that way of thinking.

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Speaker 1: Right.

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Speaker 2: A simple example would be the myth of the Amazons, right, where this is a society of very warlike women who are able to govern themselves and in fact to the exclusion of men, or if there are men, those men come underneath them. Well, it shows you the impulse in that society of a flipping of the script of what might normally have been the case. Neither one of those though, should inherently be seen as the way things ought to be. But if Paul enters into those settings, Paul's going to begin to talk from the basic understanding of one or the other. Right now, I think there's good reason to think that that's exactly what's going on at play here, not that we have too much time for it, but I had that back.

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Speaker 1: To James, I would just say, you know, when we look at because I do think again, without getting into First Timothy two at the depth that probably deserves you, said one thing, you know, he tells women what not to do, he tells men what to do. I think a lot of times when we hear that in relation to First Timothy two, and we're referring to this passage of you know, usually we're talking about on Timothy twelve or first Timothy to twelve. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over our man. His instructions to men actually come ahead of that. So what are the men to do? Here's what Paul says. I desire them that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands, without anger or quarreling. Likewise, also that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel with modesty and self control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls, or constably attire, but with what is proper for women who profess godliness with good works. Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. If you think about what's going on there, the men aren't told to exercise authority, right. It isn't as if in verse twelve, when we get there, I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man, Paul is not necessarily meaning the opposite that a man is. Now, so then he allows a man to teach and to exercise authority over a man. He never actually says that what he's prohibiting is this very specific practice. And there's some good research out there on the authority word authority there. It's not the normal excusia that we see translated authority in other places. It's actually a different Greek word that normal means some sort of a domineering authority. It's it's almost what we would use, you know, when we say someone is a dictator, even if we're using that in a relatively metaphorical way, we mean it as a to have a negative connotation, right. You know, a CEO could be a dictator in the sense that they're controlling and manipulative and you know, domineering in some way, and so that that exercising of authority there doesn't necessarily have to mean that men automatically have that same sort of license to teach and have authority in the way that Paul is prohibiting women. And I think it speaks to that sort of situational aspect that you're talking about here. There's plenty of stuff that we could go through in this passage, but at the end of the day, I think it's worth noting that the only instruction that men get here is to pray lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling, and that in verse eight, and that isn't framed as a command, It's framed as Paul's desire. So a lot of baggage there that we sort of can import into this, But as we're just sort of reading the text as it is, we don't have to make those interpretive leaps, and perhaps we shouldn't make those interpretive leaps, And so there is a there's some real interesting wrinkles there that I think are often missed. I'll say it like.

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Speaker 2: That, Yeah, well said, And I think that that sort of minimal approach to what's going on there without getting into the nuts and bolts, which is interesting but for another time in place, yes, informs what's going on as we get into chapter three that's right, right, Where the taking, for granted.

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Speaker 3: Of a of a male.

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Speaker 2: Person, yes, and the description of the episcopas the overseer, and then the description of the deacon, it becomes less obvious that that's say, what we would call a prescriptive thing, that Paul saying this is what it ought to be, and it's more of a descriptive thing that he's just describing what's going on. So in light of this reality and in light of what I see going on and the sorts of things that need some sort of fine tuning here, now we move into a description of what does it look like for someone who is an overseer and someone who is will say, for the moment deacon, though maybe it's not clear that that technical word should be what's used there. What you have being set up now is the presumption that there are those who occupy different sorts of positions, right, and that's probably a social position. One who oversees and one who's a deacon or one who serves. These are people who are living in opposition to each other, not necessarily conflict, but opposition that one is at a higher status than the ones at a lower status, right, And these are the two groups of people Paul seems to be addressing so much as saying, these are the groups we should have and it should be made up in the start of way. Right, it's a cultural judgment that already exists, and already exists, likely along gendered lines, and Paul's addressing them those who are overseeing, here's what I'm saying to you, those who are the ones who serve.

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Speaker 3: Here's what I'm saying to you.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. And I think there's one other thing I'd say, in addition to the prescriptive and descriptive framing, I think there's also the possibility within the descriptive for it to be a polemic. So imagine seeking speaking into a situation. The picture that's coming to my mind is an odd one, but the Amazonian island where a wonder woman comes from, Right, Yeah, that.

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Speaker 3: Could have been my fault since I brought up Amazon's.

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Speaker 1: I think it's your fault. Yeah, but you know, I mean this is an island where the women are are the leaders. They're domineering, they're you know, they have these very aggressive tendencies, right, They're running things. And so if you're speaking into a situation like that and you want to pull that back and correct something in that situation. What do you do? Will you address the opposite gender? And so I think that's part of what Paul is doing in chapter three in shifting into that male, male centered language. I think he's creating a polemic and basically saying, look, men, you're not to model. You're not to This isn't a takeover, right, whatever's happening in chapter two with these women who are exercising this sort of domineering authority, right, your job is not to overcome them through the same sort of domineering authority. If you want to exercise oversight, here's what that looks like. Right. It does look like domineering authority. It looks like this is a noble task. This is being above approach. This is being the husband of one mine. This is about being sober minded. This is about being self controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach like. It's about these softer characteristics that are commensurate with one that has a hold on the virtues of the community in the first place, a certain level of maturity that is not unconcerned with's what's happening, but who is who recognizes that? As I like to say, they may be stirred, but not shaken. Right, little play on James Bond. Right, they may be stirred by what they see before them, with compassion or concern or what have you, like, these are not people who are emotionally void, but they're not shaken. Their character doesn't really change. Who they are is set and stable, and it's secure in this understanding and mature stance within the Lord. And so they can be stirred by what they see before them, but they're they're going to approach that their concerns in a way that is commensurate with the way of Christ. And I think that's the interesting sort of through line that I see in between feet Timothy two and one Timothy three, is that the men are not supposed to have this sort of hostile takeover and then be just as domineering as these women who Paul is condemning and saying, I do not allow a woman to teach and have authority over men. They're to exhibit oversight in a completely different way, in a way that's commensurate with Christ. And in that same breadth, then Paul is going to say, by the way, here, here's what a servant looks like and they look oddly the same, ol, right, and so oversight and servanthood are are almost like two sides at the same coin here.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, one could certainly look at them and say, well, the list is longer for the overseer than for the servants. I think that'd be a mistake to read too much into that, not least because when you the description that he's giving for the overseer, you know, statements like be so reminded, be self controlled, be respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent, but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. There's something oddly similar about all those descriptions, right. It's as if Paul is spelling out with specificity things that all belong to the base the same basic understanding of character, in a particular kind of understanding. You know, if he took Jesus as the model for what the truly virtuous person is, the truly high character person is, he's parsoning that out in ways that maybe never have to be said. If you're just looking at Jesus. Right, when the writers of the Gospels are showing you who Jesus is, they don't really need to spell out that Jesus is not a lover of money. Yeah, but if we have this situation where people are coming into the church with already this social stratification, where there really is those who are the masters, those are the servants, those are the overseers, those are the servants, right, it makes sense to say to someone who's who's a master an overseer, don't be a lover of money. In every bit the same way that it's not really a meaningful thing to say to a servant, not because it doesn't matter as a general descriptor of people, but that's really not in the social framework of concern for the servant. And unlike a society where one might say, well, if you work hard, whether or not that's true, if you work hard, you will get ahead, that's just not that society, right, It's a deliberate, stratified society.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And I think it's interesting that you have this repetition of household throughout. So you have it in verse four, you have it in verse well, let's see twelve, and then you have it again in verse fifteen. The first two refer to the households of the one who oversees and the deacon the diaconos. But then in verse fifteen, you also have the household of God, which is the Church of the Living God, a pillar and Butcher's of the truth. And so part of I think what Paul is doing here again is he's setting this idea up of Look, we're in a particular social concept or construct right where men normally are going to be the ones who are ruling the household, and so that oversight and that management of one's household has to be such that it's reflective of what you would do in the household of God. In other words, this household is not your little fiefdom to do whatever it is you want to do. In right, it has to carry through the Kingdom of God has to carry through even in the way that you're managing your own household. I think that's an important connection between this whole In this whole section at repetition of household, it speaks to an administration. So oukos is normally referred to as sort of an administrative unit. And I know we're not used to thinking of a household as an administrative unit. Although when you have like five kids, four kids, however, many kids I have now it starts to feel really administrative, right, managing who's going to where at what time, making sure they get there on time, when you know, when are the acts again, when you need to start studying for that are there? You know, like there's a million little things to take care of. But it's not administrative in the sense of that we think of administration all the time. It's a taking care of the household and shepherding it forward is probably a better vernacular to get at sort of what that OI costs would have meant. And so even as we're reading through this, I think part of the rationale behind the male language is that if the males were the ones who were really managing the households at the time, what Paul is trying to get at is that this management of the household is to be a reflection of the household of God. That's how all this is supposed to sort of quote unquote trickle down right through again if we go back to first Timothy two. That's probably part of the problem there is that the domineering of whatever women happen to be there at this moment are overturning social convention in a way that might have implications for the Gospel. That's a large reading into context, and there are a lot behind that sort of statement. So I don't want people to think like that's just a flippant Oh, James's off his rocker and he's just throwing things out there. Right. There are a lot of things that I'm not addressing there. But I think that this it's important just to say that as these social things are sort of in upheaval in the Roman Empire, right, Paul is taking pains to sort of pull them back and say, let's not be associated with this sort of social upheaval. Let's show ourselves to be peaceful, right, Let's show ourselves to be above approach. Even you have this reference in verse twelve or I'm sorry thirteen, for those who serve as deacons gain a good standing for themselves and also great confidence in the faith that is in Jesus Christ. That standing probably isn't just within the community of faith, it's probably also outside the community of faith. And so I think there's a sense in which Paul is trying to get at sort of a corporate witness aspect in the sections that we would be wise not to ignore.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and something that's really instructive in the way that you describe that. I think that's helpful and I think that's right. Is the contrast between the posture Paul is taking from the location Paul is writing, yes, compared to the posture that we sort of take for granted. We've said this before. Paul is writing as someone who has no ability to change the social order.

00:28:40
Speaker 1: That's right.

00:28:41
Speaker 2: This is an empire. The emperor is not elected by the electoral college, never mind the popular vote. Yeah, the emperor just does the emperor because the emperor has seized enough influence in control to be able to to force the hand of the Senate of Rome right, and to use that to then appoint people to the various districts of the empire to do the will of the emperor. Right. The Senate lives ultimately or exists ultimately at the behest of the emperor. Because of the power of the emperor. The average person like Paul, who's just a citizen, merely lives within that state of affairs. It's not an opportunity to go protest. We live in a time and a place of a very different social order where we do have the ability to varying degrees to affect some sort of change, right, And maybe it's a different conversation and a worthwhile conversation later at some other point to talk about how we translate from one to the other. But again we shouldn't read back our situation into Paul's. Paul isn't advocating for the social change, but he also doesn't have the ability to affect social change. It's just not in his imaginary so within that he can begin to say, this is how things are. And in light of this, is this being the way things are? What if we have a different way of understanding, Yeah, the people within this rather than you know, we've talked about the tension that you see in Hegel's or in Nietzsche's understanding of the master's slave right where the master wants to keep the slave underneath him or her, the slave wants to overcome the master and flip the script and become something new. And in Hegel's case, this is just the eternal struggle. In Nietzsch's case, this is a struggle we can escape from altogether and become the true this true superman you mentioned wonder Woman.

00:30:42
Speaker 3: We can bring up Superman.

00:30:47
Speaker 2: In Paul's case, it's just simply this is what it is. And I'm actually going to now within this structure redescribe so to the degree that we can speak of male and female environment. It's actually the subtle ways in which Paul is undermining. Right. He's not undermining by saying I can change the system. He's saying within the church, we have the opportunity. I like to I like to describe it as window makers, to be window makers to a new a new way of being, a more beautiful way of being. We're overseers, those with those who have, those with influence. Right, I'm describing you here in ways that are gentle, right, that's his word, not violent, but gentle, that aren't quarrelsome that aren't lovers of money. But you're respectable. You're so reminded, you're self controlled. You're not you're not marrying for the purpose of status or influence.

00:31:45
Speaker 1: Right.

00:31:46
Speaker 2: We are collecting wives, which is a common thing in order to create to create levels of political power, right, affiliations here instead the husband of one wife, meaning there's a recalibration here of what marriage is.

00:32:06
Speaker 1: Right, An it's.

00:32:13
Speaker 2: An undermining of the system by describing if this is the way things are, here's a better.

00:32:17
Speaker 3: Way to do it.

00:32:18
Speaker 2: Can you ultimately see yourselves? As we've talked before in the case of interestingly enough, the Book of Ephesians, right, Timothy's in ephesis, in which those who have are re understanding themselves in light of the person of Christ as those who actually are servants of the other yeh, right, And those of you who are actually servants right. The Diaconos the First Nations translation actually calls them those who have the sacred task of helping others instead of saying, deacon, I think that's a helpful way putting it. Those who have the sacred task of helping others already do so in a way in which you're you're not being dishonest, right, It's an easy move for anyone still in this situation, you know, to pull a little bit more towards themselves to make up for the gap that's substantial he's saying. In some ways, he's saying, don't think in those terms. Think in terms of how the very work that I'm doing can be reflective of the work of Christ, and trust that provision will be there. It's sort of the idea at play, and I.

00:33:26
Speaker 1: Think one of the more interesting place is to go. The least the ones I like to go to to illustrate what you're talking about is for Samuel twelve. So for Samuel twelve, please tell me. The Israelites have asked God for a king. Like the rest of the nations. Samuel is totally against this, but he goes to God and God says, hey, don't worry about it. They're not rejecting you, Samuel, or rejecting me as king over them. So first, Samuel twelve. Samuel goes back and he says, Okay, God is going to give you a king. Congratulations. Your structure has changed, right. Your political system is now no longer ruled by judges. You now have a king. Congratulations. Now, let me lay out exactly what that means. And he says something like this will go well with you if you fear the Lord, and the king who God will place over you also fears the Lord. It will not go well with you if you don't fear the Lord and keep his commandments, or the king above you doesn't keep the Lord, and it doesn't fear the Lord and keep his commandments. And so the interesting part is the structure changes, right. There's a big difference between going from having the judges to having a king. Right, there are dynastic issues, there are centralized rulership issues. There's all these different things that are going to change. But guess what, the underlying dynamic is exactly the same. In a very real sense, nothing has changed. But congrats on the king. And I think to a large degree if we can think in that category of these structures chain But within these structures we act differently. We live according to that sort of governing dynamic of understanding. What we're supposed to do is we're supposed to fear God and we're supposed to obey his commandments. We're supposed to imitate Christ. As we get into the New Testament, like these are the things that we are supposed to do. We are we are a people on a mission of witness and testimony to the God that we serve. Now, all of a sudden, these structures take on much less importance than we normally give them. Right where I sit in some sort of weird social hierarchy is far less important than am I within the situation that God has put me? Am I serving him in an appropriate fashion? Am I still doing what He's asking me? To do. It doesn't preclude change, right, it doesn't. It doesn't say, hey, these structures should never change. That's not the point. But the point is that within the structures that we're in, there is often a through line of faithfulness that we have to exercise that'll look different depending on the structure, but the faithfulness aspect never actually changes. And I think that's part of what we're seeing here is that Paul is not advocating this structure for all times and in all places, but he is advocating it for at the very least ephesis. Right he's writing Timothy Timothy's an Ephesis, He's at least advocating it for ephesis. Likely given some of his other letters, he's advocating it for a broader swath of the churches at this time that he's writing to. But as things start to pivot and change, it doesn't mean that there's not a new way of faithfulness that we can envision once those structures shift and change. And I don't think they can change. It's not as if they're infinitely flexible, right, But at the same time, I do think that there is a malleability appliability to them that allow us to be faithful in different ways when those structures of society sort of shift and change. So I always like the first Samuel example. I think it's a helpful one.

00:37:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's helpful as well. It's worth noting that when the people of Israel wanted a king like the nations, I've often heard it preached in a way in which their problem was they wanted a king, but the Torah had already made provision for a king. Yes, the issue there is not the king per se. It's like the nations, as you pointed out, and the idea of giving you a king that's not like the nations.

00:37:46
Speaker 3: Right.

00:37:46
Speaker 2: What David is for much of but not all of his term, what Solomon seems to be at the beginning of his term but falls away from You see this, You see the contrast in the relationship of the people of biblical Israel to not just the surrounding nations, but also to the very land. Right, that seems to be more fruitful and bring forth out of that harmony a greater abundance during those periods where things are a little bit better.

00:38:16
Speaker 1: Right.

00:38:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's this, it's this God people land triangle that we've talked about.

00:38:22
Speaker 1: Right other places.

00:38:23
Speaker 2: But what that's supposed to, what that's supposed to set up is in some sense a king that's unrecognizable from the standard ways of viewing reality. It's utterly subversive, but in a different kind of way, right. And and what you can see in as a parallel here is that Paul's not saying I have any ability to affect the social change in the way things work, or my job here is to establish a new world order with a new political and economic system.

00:38:51
Speaker 3: Even if he even if he did.

00:38:53
Speaker 2: Think in those terms, which it's not clear that he did, he doesn't have the ability to affect that. But what he does have the ability is to to make this idea of the one who oversees and the one who has the sacred task of serving, unrecognizable by the normal, dysfunctional or dystopian understanding that he sees around him, and he sees that as an opportunity to win the Church of Ephesus. That to your point, he doesn't just have that for emphasis right, for whatever specifics there are here for Ephesus, he has that vision in its own way, for Colossian, for Thessaloniki, and for Antioch right, and for Jerusalem, he ultimately has that for Rome, right where he goes to Rome, or he writes to Rome and he wants to go to Rome, and he wants to go beyond that to spain. The idea here is that he's attentive to what the order is and what he needs to do or what he needs to advocate to to make some of the usual dystopian understandings unrecognizable.

00:39:55
Speaker 1: That's right, and I think that's particularly a play here where and this is where. Just to kind of sum this up, we need to be careful when we're reading these overseers and the deacon's passage not to make these paradigms of masculinity. I think two points here. Number one is what I would read is a polemic against some segment of the women within Ephesus who are trying to sort of take over the social order. Paul fundamentally disagrees with this move because it isn't commensurate in keeping with the peaceable, quiet sort of witness that he's trying to affect within the Christian community. There's some sort of an authoritarian, domineering impetus, an impulse that he doesn't like there, and he doesn't want it in the church. This is not the way this is supposed to work. This is a this, this creates a bad taste in our mouth.

00:41:00
Speaker 3: Right.

00:41:00
Speaker 1: People look at this and they say, Wow, those Christians are the liberals. They're trying to destroy Roman society. You know. I think he's concerned about witness, and again I think there's good reason to think that I would go to somewhere like a first Timothy six 's one where Paul talks about the behavior of bond servants as potentially reviling the word of God and teaching of the church. We have something similar in tites to five, where he talks about young women acting a certain way causing God's name to be reviled. These are real concerns for what Paul is seeing, and he's trying to manage the witness of the community, probably in the midst of some sort of social upheaval. So I think there's that aspect here, and that, to me is what prompts chapter three. In chapter three, what he's saying is, look, you don't have to squelch rebellion, right, but this is what one who oversees the community. He looks like, this is what one who oversees you ministers within the who as the sacred, the sacred position of helping others. As you said, like, this is how they look and this is how they act. These are not intended as a map for masculinity. These are characteristics that the Christian community are supposed to cultivate in and of in everyone. And I think he sets these people up, the people who want to be an overseer of the people who want to serve. These are the sort of people that the Christian community is to be cultivating. These are the sort of characteristics that they are supposed to have together. And part of that comes from managing their households well, not domineering their households, dominating their households right, but in managing their households well and recognizing that now in Christ some things have changed, but we've still got to hold this together. This still has to progress in a particular way. It still has to be peaceable and orderly as opposed to completely out of control. There's a lot of texture there in this letter, and we can't go deep enough in this shorter podcast really nail it down. But I think the at the end of the day, what we want to what we do want to say is all of these characteristics really are most of them are applied directly to women in other contexts. Some of them are gestured toward another context. And so this is not a roadmap for masculinity. This is a roadmap for christ Like character, is the way I.

00:43:35
Speaker 2: Would put it right, and some of those other context you're speaking of our as you said later on in the same.

00:43:41
Speaker 1: Letter later on.

00:43:42
Speaker 2: So it's not as if we're reaching far and wide to find this. No, what it is is it's a roadmap for christ Like character, as you said, which is specifically within the constructs of whatever the dynamics are for Paul to pull people back to this understanding of the kind of humility that's embodied in the God who didn't operate under the under the under the way that one might assume a god should right coming down and demonstrating great power and stomping on people, but rather came down and took this unassuming position as the son of a carpenter, walking the streets as a rabbi, rejected by many, accepted by many others, but advocating going all the way to the cross.

00:44:35
Speaker 3: Right.

00:44:36
Speaker 2: It's and it's that sort of mentality he's trying to draw in to say, ultimately, whether you're a man or a woman, this is what I expect a view, not because I'm doing it by myself, but because, as he again says in Philippians that we keep mentioning, he's wanting us to imitate me, as imitate Christ. And therefore it's it's a softening, it's a making unrecognizable. Yes, far from the sorts of masculine power, or the inversion of that to feminine power. Yes, And one could imagine the further flipping back of the script, he's sort of actually cutting all of that out, saying, consider, consider the sacred heart and work of those who serve.

00:45:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, that household of God reference in ver Timothy three, What is it I'm looking here? Fifteen Verse Timothy three fifteen If I delay. He's writing these things so that if Paul delays, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the Church of the Living God. A pillar and butter's of the truth. And you just sit back and you think about that. And then he goes on great Indeed we confess with the mystery of Godliness, and he talks basically about Christ's manifestation, the flight, vindication by the spirit seen by angels, proclaim among the nations believed on in the world, taken up in glory. It roots this back very much in a gospel oriented message. And so the connection between the way that a household runs and the Gospel is at the very least implicit in this section. I would argue it's a little more than that, right, But because it comes in the end, it has sort of this inverse argument. We kind of like our thesis and then our points and then a conclusion. What Paul tends to do is he lays all this out then makes his other sort of thesis point like, Hey, everything you're doing in the household of man, you're supposed to be doing in conformity to the household of God, and in that you exhibit the Gospel. And so I think there's just more here than most of the time many of us would look at. And I think, you know, in some of the literature I read, at least on biblical masculinity, I see these passages come up in alle awful lot with reference to what are the characteristics men should exhibit. I don't think that's inappropriate so long as what we're really saying there is these are characteristics that all people should exhibit, men included, Right, So I feel like that was a good treatment. Let's leave it there and we'll call it an episode.

00:47:22
Speaker 3: Man.

00:47:23
Speaker 1: So thanks everybody for listening, Thanks all hush for being here, and we'll catch on the next episode of Thinking Christian. Take care everybody. I just want to take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio dot com, you'll find dozens of other faith centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more.