In a world saturated with sound bites and clickbait headlines, thoughtful and thorough critical reviews are rare. Reviews that are also gracious in tone are rarer still. Dr. John Whittaker’s recent review of my book From Genesis to Junia is one of those rare exceptions.
John is a good friend, and I’ve long appreciated his careful, studious attention to the biblical text. So when he told me he was writing a review of my book, I was genuinely excited. I knew he would disagree with my conclusions, but I also knew he would push me in substantive ways—especially when it came to my argumentation and exegesis.
He did exactly that.
John begins his review by noting several points of agreement before turning to a series of critiques, and he maintains an irenic tone throughout. I’m grateful for the time and care he put into reading the book, thinking deeply about it, and offering pushbacks that have genuinely sharpened my own thinking. In several places, his critique has helped me clarify what I was trying to say and where I could have said it better.
For the sake of space, I’m going to pass over his many positive comments about the book—though I do think they accurately reflect my work—and focus instead on the critiques I take to be most significant.
Defining Leadership as Service
One of the central claims I make in the book is that Jesus’s revolutionary teaching about authority and greatness in God’s kingdom deeply shapes both his own view of leadership and Paul’s. In the world’s kingdoms, rulers “exercise authority” and “lord it over” others. But “it shall not be so among you,” Jesus says (Mark 10:42–43). Instead, the one who is great in the kingdom is the servant.
Now, I do not draw a simplistic straight line from this passage and argue: therefore women were leaders in the church. That is not my argument. My point is more modest and more precise: in the one passage where Jesus speaks most directly about leadership, he identifies service as one of its defining characteristics. I’m careful in the book to say that “servant” language is not simply synonymous with “leader.” They are not interchangeable terms. Still, service does emerge as a central trait of leadership in early Christianity.
John worries that my language here “muddies the waters” in the discussion about women in leadership. He writes:
The very question being debated is about definite leadership positions. If titles and ordination don’t matter, why are we even discussing this subject? The overarching question he pursues in this book is whether women can occupy certain specific ministry positions that have titles (e.g., elder/overseer, deacon, etc.) and often require some kind of ordination.
I don’t think John has quite grasped my argument at this point—or perhaps I could have made it clearer. I actually don’t think the debate should be reduced to leadership “positions” or ministry “titles” that “often require some kind of ordination.” In chapter 4, one of my goals is precisely to broaden our criteria for what counted as leadership in the context of first-century house churches. I end that chapter with a section titled “Revisiting ‘Leadership’ in First-Century House Churches,” where I suggest that we need to ask better questions:
[I]t would be wrong to limit our quest to the question, Are women described as “elders,” “overseers,” or “pastor-teachers”? This is a good question to include in our search, but it’s not the only one. Instead, we should ask, Are women described with explicit leadership terminology, associated with other terms and phrases that may signify leadership, or identified in a way that would have been understood as leadership according to the first-century context of early Christians who met in homes?
That’s the key point. Leadership in the early church cannot be reduced to titles alone, and it is far from obvious that our modern notion of “ordination” maps neatly onto the New Testament world.
John also critiques me for blurring the distinction between “leadership” and “service.” He writes:
Sprinkle seems to imply that since servanthood is at the heart of Jesus’ vision of leadership, then all servants are leaders. I know he knows this isn’t the case, but he makes a handful of statements throughout the book…that suggest if you find a servant, you’ve found a leader. But this is an erroneous understanding of Jesus’ words. The point of Jesus’ teaching is not that the janitor is the one who actually leads the company. His point is that the leader of the company should have the heart that would make him a good janitor. In other words, not every servant is a leader; but every leader must be a servant.
This is a good pushback. In fact, I made almost exactly that point in earlier drafts of the book—something along the lines of: just because every leader is a servant does not mean every servant is a leader. I went back to find this statement in my book, but alas—I must have cut it from the final draft! I now wish I had kept it in.
So, let me clarify what I was trying to say. I fully agree with John that not everyone who serves is therefore a leader. But I do think the New Testament’s view of leadership goes beyond simply saying that a Christians leader should have a servant’s heart. Here are several of the observations I make in the book:
- In the one place where Jesus comes closest to defining leadership (Mark 10:42–45 and parallels), he identifies service as a key leadership trait.
- In the Gospels, the only people who explicitly model this trait—apart from Jesus himself—are women (e.g., Mark 1:31; 15:41).
- Jesus’s teaching on leadership significantly shapes Paul’s own understanding of Christian leadership (see 1 Cor. 1–5).
- Every named person Paul calls a “servant” is also a leader in the early church: Apollos (1 Cor. 3:5), Timothy (1 Tim. 4:6), Epaphras (Col. 1:7), and Tychicus (Col. 4:7; cf. Eph. 6:21). We could also add Jesus (Rom. 15:8; Gal. 2:17), Paul himself—who refers to himself as a servant seven times with reference to his apostolic ministry—and, of course, Phoebe (Rom. 16:1).
Again, I’m not presenting these observations as some airtight proof that women were therefore church leaders. Rather, they contribute to a larger cumulative case—a picture that is suggestive, not independently decisive, but increasingly compelling when taken together with everything else I argue in the book.
Women Filled Some Leadership Roles—but Not Every Leadership Role
John also critiques me for what he sees as an illogical move: if women filled some leadership roles, then I must think they filled every leadership role. As he puts it, “His reasoning seems to be that if we find women acting as leaders, then this proves egalitarianism.” But, he says, that conclusion does not follow: “Leadership in one position or five positions does not necessitate leadership in every position.”
My response here follows from what I already hinted at it above. In the book, I argue that the New Testament does not present a neat hierarchy of church leadership where, say, a senior pastor or bishop occupies the top tier, followed by elders, and then by deacons beneath them. That sort of hierarchical structure becomes more visible in the second century (for example, in Ignatius), but the New Testament itself presents a much more varied and fluid picture. It uses a wide range of leadership terminology, and that terminology does not line up neatly with the institutional structures many of us are used to today.
While Paul uses the specific terms “overseer” and “elder” in only three of his thirteen letters (1 Timothy, Titus, and Philippians), he regularly refers to leaders in other churches with different terms and phrases that appear to describe people functioning in ways similar to elders and overseers. For example, one of Paul’s most frequently used leadership terms is proistēmi (“to lead, manage, care for”). He uses it to describe the leadership of overseers (1 Tim. 3:5) and elders (1 Tim. 5:17), and he uses it to describe leaders in gender-inclusive contexts (Rom. 12:8; 1 Thess. 5:12; cf. 1 Tim. 3:12). The noun prostatis, which Paul applies to Phoebe (Rom. 16:2), is closely related to the verb proistēmi and conveys the same point—one who leads, manages, and (financially) cares for others. The leadership term proistēmi, then, does not designate a specific leadership role distinct from other leadership roles. If women were proistēmi-ing the church—and it appears that they were—then it would be wrong to say they were performing some leadership roles and not others.
The same goes for heads of households who hosted gatherings in their home, which includes several women named in the New Testament (Lydia, Nympha, Mary, and others). As I argue in my book, such household hosts likely functioned as overseers of the gatherings that met in their homes, even if the term “overseer” isn’t always used in connection to such hosts.
In short, leadership in first-century house-churches cannot be neatly compartmentalized into certain roles that are completely distinct from other roles, and various terms are used to describe various leadership roles that often functionally overlap. Readers will have to judge the strength of that argument by engaging the relevant sections of the book, especially chapter 4. And to be clear, I’m not the first scholar to make these observations about leadership in the New Testament church. But the point for now is simply this: once the premise of my argument is understood, the conclusion John attributes to me does not follow in the simplistic way he suggests. My reasoning is not: women held some roles, therefore they held all roles. Rather, leadership categories for first-century house-churches are much more fluid, overlapping, and diverse than what we have .
Describing the First-Century World
John also critiques me for making what he sees as inconsistent claims about women’s social influence in the first-century world. He writes:
When making a point about how the original Greco-Roman readers would’ve heard the narratives in the Gospels about the faithfulness of the women disciples in contrast to the faithlessness of male disciples, Sprinkle describes the culture of those original readers as “male dominated…where women were considered less significant, less moral, less wise, and less virtuous than men” (page 84). But when arguing that in a first-century house church the woman of the house would’ve been a de facto leader in the church, he argues that women in Greco-Roman culture had “leadership roles in civic, religious, and even political spheres” (page 110) and contends that they often wielded more power and authority over the management of the household than their husband.
I’m genuinely glad John raised this point. If it felt inconsistent to him, it may well have felt inconsistent to other readers too.
So let me clarify. Women did live in a world largely dominated by men. That much is true. But that broad statement doesn’t erase the fact that there were real and significant exceptions. For instance, roughly two-thirds of property was owned by men. That certainly indicates an imbalance. But the fact that about one-third was owned by women also tells us that a substantial number of women possessed real economic agency. Similarly, men occupied most formal civic, political, and religious offices in the Greco-Roman world. But there were still meaningful exceptions to that rule, and I discuss several of them in the book.
Things become even more complex when we turn to the household—the very arena John highlights. On the one hand, Greco-Roman male writers such as Aristotle and Didymus idealized male rule in the home and grounded that ideal in a broader vision of social hierarchy. On the other hand, lived reality was often messier than the literature suggests. As I write in chapter 7, ancient male writers:
saw husbands as superior rulers, and everyone else—including wives—as inferior people to be ruled. Life on the ground, however, was more complicated. As we saw in chapter 4, wives often held more authority and influence than what’s sometimes conveyed in the literature. But one thing is clear: The literary trope of the household code propped up the husband as the supreme ruler in the house, even if these codes were more prescriptive and not descriptive of real life (p. 174).
That tension matters. The literary ideal and lived practice were not always the same thing.
To be clear, scholars who specialize in Greco-Roman society do not all agree on exactly how much authority women exercised in the first century. There is real debate here. Some emphasize the strength of patriarchal norms; others underscore the many ways elite and economically empowered women exercised influence. I did my best to navigate those complexities, though I certainly wouldn’t claim expertise in Greco-Roman social history. My point was not to say one thing when it helped my case and another when it didn’t. My point was to reflect the complexity of the world we’re dealing with.
The Framing of Women in Jesus’s Ministry
John also critiques my claim that women are held up in the Gospels as models of discipleship over against the failures of the male disciples, especially the Twelve. He summarizes my argument this way: women are portrayed as faithful while “the men, especially the apostles, are ‘faithless.’” Or again: “the Gospel writers contrast the women’s faithfulness with the faithlessness of the Twelve” (p. 84).
He thinks I overstate the case. In response, he points to the faithfulness of Joseph in Matthew 1, to the initial obedience of Peter, Andrew, James, and John in leaving their nets to follow Jesus, and to Jesus’s commendation of Peter’s confession. He writes: “although women played influential roles and were often excellent models of discipleship, that did not promote them to every position of leadership, nor does it disqualify the men from their appointed position of leadership.”
This is a fair criticism, and in retrospect I should have acknowledged—perhaps even in a footnote—that the apostles are not portrayed negatively in every respect. They do display positive traits at points, and my summary on page 84 should have reflected that more carefully.
Regarding John’s examples (Whittaker, not the Apostle), I do want to point out: Joseph isn’t part of the 12. Peter’s confession was short-lived, as he received an immediate and scathing rebuke from Jesus (Matt. 16:22–23; Mark 8:32–33) and he ended up denying Jesus during his last days, while women were the ones who stood by him at the cross. James and John certainly left their nets to follow Jesus initially, but were later rebuked by Jesus on multiple occasions for their secular desire for power. Mark’s gospel in particular is ruthless in its negative evaluation of the 12 while highlighting the faithfulness of women in contrast. The 12 often lacked faith (4:40; 6:50; 9:19; 11:22), doubted Jesus’ supernatural abilities (6:50–52; 8:4), misunderstood his messianic vocation (8:31–33), failed to understand his words (7:18; 8:14–21), were unable to cast out demons (9:14–19), deserted him in his greatest hour of need (14:50), and, in the case of Peter, denied that they knew him (14:66–72).
In short, I shouldn’t have given the impression that the Gospels paint an absolutely negative portrait of the 12’s failures in contrast to the faithfulness of women. It’s not absolute. But it is almost absolute. The women repeatedly embody the sort of radical discipleship Jesus calls for, while the Twelve repeatedly fail to embody it. That contrast remains, in my view, one of the more arresting features of the Gospel narratives.
The Twelve Male Apostles
John also pushes back on my treatment of the argument that Jesus’s selection of twelve male apostles points toward male leadership in the church. In the book, I question the reasoning behind that argument, since the number and sex of the Twelve are bound up with Israel’s symbolic restoration. As I put it, the twelve apostles “represent a reconstituted twelve tribes of Israel. Since the twelve tribes derive from twelve male patriarchs (sons of Jacob), the twelve apostles had to be male for the symbolism to work” (p. 88). I therefore question whether Jesus’s rationale for choosing 12 men was intended to establish a principle of male-only leadership for the future church.
John disagrees. He writes that the sex of the Twelve is indeed relevant to the question of male leadership in the church, since these men are described as foundational. And of course he is right that the apostles are foundational to the church. But prophets are also named alongside apostles in that foundational role (Eph. 2:20; 3:5), and women were prophets. Moreover, Junia was an apostle (Rom. 16:7). She was not one of the Twelve, of course. Neither was Paul. But Paul and the other non-Twelve apostles seem to have exercised comparable authority.
Lastly, if the 12 apostles are meant to signify what church leadership should look like, then why do they so often (not always!) fail to embody the leadership traits expected of leaders, while women often embody such traits? (John addresses this point but doesn’t find it convincing.) I find it questionable, then, that Jesus’s rationale for choosing 12 male apostle was intended to make a statement about the required sex of future leaders of the church.
At the end of the day, John and I may simply have to disagree here. I continue to think the argument from the twelve male apostles has more cracks in it than he allows.
Phoebe, Priscilla, and Junia (Romans 16)
I devote an entire chapter of the book to Phoebe, Priscilla, and Junia. My aim there is to examine the language Paul uses for each woman and to argue that, taken together, the evidence forms a cumulative case that all three served as leaders in the church. The phrase cumulative case matters. I am not building the argument on one contested word or one speculative reconstruction. If Phoebe were merely a letter carrier, that by itself would not settle the matter. If Priscilla were merely called a co-worker, that might be suggestive, but not conclusive. As I write in the conclusion, “If all we had were one or two debated words, I would be much more hesitant to draw” a “conclusion” about these women occupying leadership roles. “But the cumulative case seems overwhelming.”
John doesn’t evaluate and overturn my cumulative case for my claims in this chapter. This is understandable; such a comprehensive counterargument would double the length of his already very long review! My only concern is that someone might read his review and not read my chapter and think that he’s overturned my multifaceted argument. With that said, I’ll respond briefly to some of his key critiques.
Priscilla
On Priscilla, John writes: “it’s true that Priscilla is called Paul’s coworker in ministry. And she and Aquila hosted churches in their homes. But to refer to her as an ‘early church leader’ (page 137), and by that to mean that she occupied the same role as a male elder, is inaccurate and unpersuasive.”
There are several problems with this criticism, but I’ll mention two.
First, as I argue in chapter 4, the hosts of house churches likely functioned as the de facto overseers or elders of those gatherings. John may disagree, but he doesn’t offer a direct counterargument to that claim.
Second, he doesn’t really grapple with the significance of the term “co-worker” as Paul uses it. As I note in the book, “Paul uses the term ‘coworker’ (sunergos) twelve times to describe sixteen different people, three of whom are women (including Priscilla). Almost all the people Paul identifies as coworkers were clearly leaders in the church” (p. 136). I unpack that claim in an extended footnote:
Coworkers who are clearly leaders include Luke, Mark, Timothy, Titus, and Philemon. I think complementarians would be happy to add Aquila to this list. Aristarchus (Philem. 24) should probably also be considered a leader; he was a traveling minister with Paul (Acts 19:29; 20:4; 27:2), and the two were in prison together (Col. 4:10). Paul’s description of Epaphroditus (Phil. 2:25–30) is glowing: Paul calls him “my brother, co-worker and fellow soldier,” “your messenger [apostolon]” and servant, who should be considered highly “honor[ed]” since he “risked his life” for “the work of Christ.” The cumulative weight of all these terms and phrases suggests he was a leader. We know less about Demas (Philem. 24), who’s mentioned in passing in Colossians 4:14 and ended up leaving the faith toward the end of Paul’s ministry (2 Tim. 4:10). We also know little about Clement (Phil. 4:3), who’s only mentioned once. (Several early church fathers identified him as “Clement of Rome,” the third bishop of the Roman church, but there is no biblical evidence for this.) He was a coworker with Paul who “contended at [Paul’s] side” along with Euodia and Syntyche (Phil. 4:2–3). We know the least about Justus (Col. 4:11), who’s simply called a coworker of Paul.
So yes, not every single co-worker is clearly identifiable as a church leader. But most are. And Priscilla and Aquila are not simply called co-workers. They also host multiple house churches and instruct Apollos “in the way of God more accurately” (Acts 18:26). Those pieces belong together. And notably, Priscilla is often named first. Taken cumulatively, the evidence strongly suggests that she and Aquila functioned as leaders in the church. I also see no evidence that Paul was intent on assuring his readers that Priscilla exercised such ministry only under some explicitly male-exclusive chain of authority.
Phoebe
Paul describes Phoebe as a “servant of the church at Cenchreae,” a benefactor (prostatis) of Paul and many others, and almost certainly the carrier of Romans. In the book, I argue that prostatis carries leadership connotations, and I also point out that every other named person Paul calls a “servant” is a leader in the church. John doesn’t really engage those lexical arguments. Instead, he focuses on my reconstruction of Phoebe’s role as letter carrier:
Sprinkle goes beyond the text to speculate based on what we know about ancient letters that she could’ve read (or performed) the letter to the Romans and explained things as she went. Implication: she was the first person who ever “preached” the book of Romans.
I think my argument was a little more cautious than this. No one doubts that she carried Paul’s letter to the Roman church. I then explored the historical role that letter carriers performed—and there is much ancient literature on this—which included reading (or “performing”) the letter and possibly be called upon to explain the letter to the recipients. The main point I make about this historical reconstruction is as follows:
I want to be cautious not to squeeze too much out of this historical reconstruction. We don’t actually know for sure how Phoebe read Paul’s letter or if she offered any authoritative interpretation or explanation of his words. These things are historically plausible, maybe even likely, but they’re not certain. What we can say with certainty is that Paul trusted Phoebe with a letter vital to his ministry—and indeed, the history of Christianity—and he didn’t have a problem putting a woman in a position where she might be expected to expand upon, interpret, and explain the contents of the letter.
That qualification is important, and John doesn’t mention it. Instead, he highlights a line from the chapter’s conclusion where I say that Paul “entrusts her with carrying and performing his most important letter at the crux of his ministry” (p. 149).
I thank John for challenging my summary at the end of my chapter. It does sound more definite than I had intended. Exploring Pheobe’s role in her letter-carrying activities does rely on some level of historically informed speculation—something I tried to capture in my section on Pheobe but might have been too confidently asserted in my conclusion.
So, to clarify, the bolded statement in my above quote was my main point: “What we can say with certainty is that Paul trusted Phoebe with a letter vital to his ministry—and indeed, the history of Christianity— and he didn’t have a problem putting a woman in a position where she might be expected to expand upon, interpret, and explain the contents of the letter.” Coupled with Paul’s description of Pheobe as a “servant of the church at Cenchrea” and “benefactor to Paul and many others,” I still stand my conclusion that the cumulative evidence suggests that Phoebe was a leader in the church (and there’s no evidence that she operated under the authority of other male church leaders who occupied higher levels of leadership).
Junia
John’s critique of my treatment of Junia centers on my discussion of her imprisonment. It’s worth saying at the outset that I spend quite a bit of space in the chapter arguing that Paul really does call Junia an apostle and that her apostleship belongs in the same broad category as that of other apostles beyond the Twelve, such as Paul and Apollos. John doesn’t engage that part of the argument. Instead, he focuses on whether I read too much into the reference to her being a “fellow prisoner.”
He suggests that I go “beyond what the text actually says” and that Junia “may not have even endured the hellhole Sprinkle describes.” He raises two possible alternatives: first, that “fellow prisoner” may be figurative, as in Ephesians 3:1; second, that if it is literal, Junia may have been under some form of house arrest, like Paul in Acts 28.
I don’t find either option persuasive. There have been a few scholars who have suggested a figurative meaning for Junia’s imprisonment (G. Kittel, TDNT 1.196–97; Fàbrega, “War Junia(s)?” 50–51; Castel S. Pietro, “Synaichmalōtos,” Origen, In ep. ad Romans 10.21), but the majority of scholars find this interpretation to be incredulous (see Moo, Romans, 938-939; Kruse, Romans, 562; Jewett, Romans, 962; Fitzmyer, Romans, 739; Sanday and Headlam, Romans, 423; Käsemann, Romans; Mounce, Romans, 276; Bruce, Romans, 272; Morris, Romans, 534; Peterson, Romans, 540) for at least three reasons. First, the word “fellow prisoners” (synaichmalōtos) is paired with “fellow countrymen,” which refers to Andronicus and Junia’s literal ethnicity (they were Jews like Paul). Second, Paul uses the same word, synaichmalōtos, only two other times (Col 4:10; Phlmn 23) and both times it refers to literal imprisonment. Third, as Rober Jewett argues, the figurative interpretation “seems most unlikely because it would then remain unclear why all the other early Christian evangelists mentioned in this chapter were not also so designated (Romans, 962).
As for the possibility that Junia was in a house arrest and not a hellish prison, there’s no evidence for this. Paul’s own house arrest in Rome happened long after Paul wrote his letter to the Romans, so he could not be referring to this in Romans 16:7. And the root term aichmalōtos most often refers to a prisoner of war (e.g. Psalms of Solomon 2.6; Luke 21:24; 1 Macc. passim; Josephus passim; see Gupta, “Reconstructing Junia’s Imprisonment,” 389). A different word is used in Acts 28:30 to described Paul’s house arrest (misthōmati, “rented house”).
In short, there’s much better exegetical evidence for Junia doing time in a literal prison.
Now, does that mean we can reconstruct Junia’s prison conditions with certainty? Of course not. And I tried to acknowledge that in the book, though perhaps I could have done so more carefully. But once you conclude that Junia was literally imprisoned, a responsible interpreter must ask what that likely meant for a woman in the first-century world. That kind of work necessarily involves historical research and historically informed reconstruction. It is not “going beyond the text” in any irresponsible way. It is an attempt to understand the text in its historical and social context. That, it seems to me, is simply good historical exegesis.
So, I appreciate John’s push for precision here. But I still do not think his objections overturn the cumulative case I make for Phoebe, Priscilla, and Junia as women described by Paul in leadership-related ways.
1 Timothy 2:8–15
John’s longest and final section deals with my treatment of 1 Timothy 2:8–15, beginning with my discussion of authentein in 1 Timothy 2:12. He appears to agree with me that, in the ancient evidence we possess, the word refers to the sort of authority exercised by masters over slaves or rulers over inferiors. But he disagrees that Paul would have regarded that as negative. He thinks I make the mere existence of hierarchy the problem. As he puts it:
Social hierarchies, including slavery, were simply part of the first-century world of Jesus and Paul. And though their hierarchies were a little more defined than ours today, we still have hierarchies today. It’s simply the way societies are organized and operate. So just because a word is consistently used in a hierarchical context does not make the word inherently negative.
To be clear, I wouldn’t say—and didn’t say—that “it’s the bare fact of hierarchy that makes” authentein a negative word. Rather, it’s the kind of hierarchy that surrounds every other use of authentein in ancient literature. As I say show in my book:
[I]n every occurrence of the verb authentein prior to AD 312, few though they may be, the word conveys an authority characteristic of rulers and masters at the top of the secular social hierarchy—the kind of authority both Jesus and Paul directly and consistently denounce.
The meaning of authentein, then, is akin to the “rulers of the Gentiles” who “lord it over” others and “those in high positions who act as tyrants over them” (Mark 10:42). This is the very kind of secular authority that both Jesus and Paul often and aggressively denounced. This doesn’t mean leaders don’t have authority. It doesn’t necessarily mean there are no social hierarchies in the church (I would still question this, but it wasn’t my point). My point was that such dominating authority apparent in every other use of authentein is contrary to Christian leadership.
John seems to understand that argument but doesn’t think it carries the weight I assign it. He notes, for instance, that Paul tells slaves to count their masters (despotas) worthy of honor and to serve them all the more (1 Tim. 6:1–2). So perhaps Paul was not as troubled by this type of hierarchical authority as I suggest.
But I think that conflates two very different issues. It is one thing for Paul to instruct Christians how to live faithfully within a larger social structure they did not yet have the power to dismantle. It is another thing entirely to say that the church should reproduce that very structure internally as its own model of leadership. Plus, when it comes to Paul’s instructions to masters, he does challenge masters not to act like masters normally act (Eph. 6:9), which shows that he does not simply sanctify the social order as it stands.
So no, I do not find it persuasive to argue that Paul must have been comfortable with Christian leaders exercising master-like, dominating authority simply because he also gave instructions to masters and slaves.
John also wonders why Paul would “forbid only the women from exercising domineering authority and domineering teaching?” Does this mean “he allow[s] a man to teach and exercise authority in a domineering manner? It seems an odd thing to say.” John goes on to note that it was “domineering men” who “are a problem for the church in Ephesus [1 Tim 1:20; 2 Tim 3:6]. So why single out only the women and prohibit them from being domineering?”
My quick answer is that it’s a both/and, not an either/or. Throughout 1 and 2 Timothy, Paul addresses male-specific problems (1 Tim 1:20; 2:9), female-specific problems (1 Tim 5:4-16), and many other issues that are applicable to both men and women. The entire context of 1 Timothy 2:8-15 is directed toward wealthy women (2:8-9) who were acting immodesty (note Paul’s use of sōphrosunē that envelopes the passage: 2:8, 15). There’s plenty of historical evidence, which shows that the kinds of women Paul describes in 1 Timothy 2:8-15 (wealthy, elite, immodest, unsubmissive) were exactly the kinds of women who would be prone to dominate men—especially in a place like Ephesus.
Male Elders
Finally, John says that I “downplay the argument for male-only elders from 1 Timothy 3:1–7.” More precisely, of course, the passage concerns overseers, though the terms may well overlap with elders (cf. Titus 1). His focus is on the phrase “a one-woman man” (1 Tim. 3:2). He rightly notes that the phrase is male-specific. At one point he says that “Sprinkle’s contention that it’s not male-specific turns out to be false,” but that does not accurately represent my view. Later in the review, however, he states my position correctly: I acknowledge that the phrase is gender-specific, but argue that it is descriptive rather than prescriptive. He quotes me accurately: “Within Paul’s ancient context, most qualified overseers would have been married men with children. But Paul is not trying to rule out the possibility of women overseers” (p. 286).
This section of John’s review is actually one of my favorites because it raises some genuinely sharp questions.
First, he doesn’t agree with my plea for consistency when I argue that if we’re going to take Paul’s words as literal and absolute, then we must not only demand that all overseers be male, but also married and have at least two children. After all, Paul says that overseers “must be…a husband of one wife” and also “must…have his children under control” (1 Tim 3:4-5). John says “this confuses what is situational (e.g., if he has kids, they must obey him) with what is not (i.e., a person’s gender).”
But as I say in my book, why make some of Paul’s requirements situational (marriage, children) and others (male) not? John simply asserts that the former are situational, while the latter is not. But there’s no basis in the text to make this distinction.
Second, John’s best pushback comes when he addresses my argument that Paul is assuming a situation where most qualified overseers would have been men, and therefore Paul’s requirements for overseers assumes that the ones who would be likely candidates for overseers would be married men, who owned homes and had children. John points out: “it seems inconsistent with Sprinkle’s argument earlier in the book that women often had more power in the home than men, and thus they would’ve been viewed as leaders (see pages 110-11).” John’s right. Earlier in the book, I mention several women who were heads of households who hosted churches in their homes (Lydia, Nympha, etc.) and suggest that they probably functioned as overseers of the gatherings in their home. So, the burden of proof is on me to show that Paul did have such cases in mind when penned 1 Timothy 3 (or Titus 1).
I think the best answer is the one I give in the book: Paul is describing the most common social profile of likely overseer candidates in his context, not necessarily laying down an exhaustive or exceptionless rule about the sex of every future overseer. Most qualified overseers in the ancient world would have been married men with children. Paul was describing a situation as it were, not prescribing a universal rule for how things always must be. And unless one insists that every overseer must literally be married and have children, I don’t see why the male-specific language must be taken as absolute while the family language is not.
So yes, the wording is male-specific. I fully acknowledge that. But it still seems to me more descriptive and situational than prescriptive and universal.
And this is why I do not think the matter can be decided on the basis of 1 Timothy 3 alone. It has to be weighed together with the rest of the New Testament’s evidence about women, leadership, and the fluid range of leadership terminology used in early Christian communities. I do not see a rigidly stratified leadership structure in the New Testament where overseers or elders unambiguously occupy a higher tier than teachers, apostles, prophets, household leaders, and others.
John ends his review with a fair and important question:
I think it’s fair to ask that, if the male specific language of 1 Timothy 3 (as well as Titus 1) doesn’t require male overseers, why did the church for 1900 years understand it as requiring male overseers? There have been debates about many things during church history, but about the topic of male elders (pastors, priests, or whatever title is used), the church spoke with one voice for 1900 years.
Admittedly, I’m not a church historian, so I don’t know if John’s assumption is true or not. I have dabbled enough in the literature to know that the potential leadership roles that women played throughout church history is widely debated (see, e.g. Cohick and Hughes, Christian Women in the Patristic World; Gary Macy, The Hidden History of Women’s Ordination; Taylor and Ramelli, Patterns of Women’s Leadership in Early Christianity; Karen Torjesen, When Women Were Priests).
In any case, if we’re going to appeal to the weight of church history, then I think it’s fair to ask how consistently that principle gets applied. I’d be interested, for example, in hearing John’s views on infant baptism or the Eucharist and how he negotiates the tradition there.
Let me end where I began. I’m genuinely grateful for John’s review—for its care, its thoughtfulness, its rigor, and its tone. He challenged me at several important points, and some of those challenges have helped me see where my own argument could be sharper and more precise. I’m also grateful for his kind words about my work as a whole.
Most of all, though, I’m grateful for his friendship—especially the kind of friendship that can sustain real disagreement without sacrificing charity.
