Say this every morning and every night. I am healthy. I am wealthy. I am divine. Everything comes to me in the perfect time.

I am hot. I am rich girl. I'm so fine. Universe and me are alive. The worst part of this one is seeing my producer in the corner, my eye dancing to this is just, oh goodness, don't.

Welcome to A Reasonable Response. My name is Robert Bosley, and the purpose of this podcast is to give a reasoned response to issues related to the Christian faith from a Reformed Baptist perspective. Each episode contains what we call the breakdown, where I respond to a video related to the topic at hand, and today, that's the completely non-controversial topic of patriarchy. But before we get to the breakdown, my producer Cameron selected a few videos to review of a few people who aren't exactly fans of the patriarchy. Can we talk about Proverbs 31 real quick?

I promise it's not what you think. So Proverbs 31 is one of these passages that is often used to justify cis-heteropatriarchal gender binaries and gender norms for women that are relegating women to the household, to birthing babies, to doing so with like a shiny domestic bliss, I love Lucy kind of sheen on their faces. And first of all, this completely misses the fact that in Proverbs 31, the husband and the wife seem to share equally in the labor of the household. Where? There's nothing in the chapter about the husband equally sharing the work of the household.

There's very little actually said about him. The whole point of the chapter is that this is a picture of a virtuous, godly woman, and she does all these things, she's industrious, she does all this work, but her primary focus is on caring for her home, providing for her children and her husband, and as a result, he is even well known in the gates because he has such a virtuous godly wife. There's nothing here about feminism. The Bible doesn't say anywhere women are supposed to submit to men. It doesn't actually say that.

It actually only says in Ephesians 5 the context is marriage, and 1 Timothy 2, the context I think is the church. In fact, if you go to 1 Corinthians 7, one of the craziest passages, I think, that, contextually in the Bible, is it says there that the husband's body belongs to the wife and the wife's body belongs to the husband. In the ancient Near East back then, 2000 years ago, everybody would understood the woman's body because of the patriarchy. Nope, the fact that it says the man's body belongs, people have been like, what are you, what, what are you talking about? And so I just think it's really important that the Bible doesn't oppress women.

Christians certainly have, because Christians haven't lived out the essence of what the Bible says. I'm not entirely sure what his point was because he never actually finished a single sentence, but no, the Bible does say that women ought to submit, that wives should submit to their husbands. Biblical patriarchy doesn't say that every woman submits to every man, merely that God designed men to be in positions of authority. That's really what patriarchy means. And people like this saying that we don't care what the Bible says is just laughable.

He doesn't have a clue what's in scripture. I believe that every woman and girl should be granted the respect and the dignity they deserve. I believe that we should live in a world where every girl can maximize her potential and have a bright future full of enormous opportunity and success in front of her because her gender does not limit her capability. I believe that every woman and girl should be, should she desire, should have her voice heard. I mean, your gender kind of limits your capability.

Men and women are different. God made us differently. And there are certain things that men can do that women can't and there are definitely certain things that women can do that men can't And that's a good thing This whole idea that we just need to be this androgynous Mess is just not helpful for society women men nothing. It's it's just a mess. I've literally heard women say, I hate men.

Of course, absolutely. Death to the patriarchy, all these things. Wait a second, death to the patriarchy means death to the societal structures in which give men more societal power than women for no reason. That's not the hatred of men, unless you think men ought to have that power because they are men. That is the only way you interpret it that way.

So all I'm showing here is a lot of these ideas of what you think misandry is, are just your misogynistic instincts and assumptions being exposed. Sounds like a couple of dudes who need to find a good church and learn how to become biblical patriarchs. Three things I'll be teaching my children, my sons and daughters. Number one, we live in a patriarchy because number two men are afraid of women and number three men are afraid of women because women are smarter more emotionally intelligent and just all around the superior creature than men. And it's time we embrace that instead of run from it.

So if Women are smarter and just all around the superior creature, then how does the patriarchy exist? For the breakdown today, we're going to look at a video from the Breaking Down Patriarchy podcast with Amy McPhee-Alabast titled, Is Christianity Patriarchal? This question, is Christianity patriarchal, is answered, I think, with an obvious yes, depending on how you define the word That's one of the many problems with this video She doesn't really give us a clear definition of what she means by patriarchal She seems to lump together patriarchal misogynist oppressing women saying mean things to women and just generally the idea that men should be in charge, all under the same heading. Of course, that's not what the scriptures teach. The scriptures do give us a clear and consistent hierarchy of masculine rule, what we often would call patriarchy.

And this patriarchy established in scripture reflects who God is. God is the great Father who rules over all things, and He made men and women in His image equally image-bearers, but with different roles and purposes in a hierarchical structure. And so with that introduction, let's look at clip one. In both the Hebrew tradition and the Greco-Roman tradition, men partitioned women off into a separate inferior category where they were only allowed to have any authority in the home. We'll talk about that more in a minute.

It was in this context that Jesus started his movement. He could have gone along with those social norms. It would have made it a lot easier for him to avoid criticism from Hebrew and Roman authorities. But instead, the stories in the Bible show Jesus constantly, flagrantly breaking social norms when it came to women. This is just not true.

Find me the passage where the authorities, the Pharisees, criticized Jesus for overturning gender norms. You won't find it. It doesn't exist. The fact is that Jesus upheld, generally speaking, the patriarchal norms of first century Judean society. He appointed men to be his apostles, even though several prominent women followed and even contributed to his ministry.

He commissioned the twelve, those same men, to go out and preach when he sent them to preach throughout Israel in pairs in Mark chapter 6. And even in his parables, Jesus consistently pictured women doing the traditionally feminine tasks that we would expect women to do in that time. Not one time did Jesus teach contrary to the established patriarchal order that we see laid down in Genesis 1-3 or throughout the rest of the Tanakh. There may have been some eyebrows raised in his conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well because Jesus was speaking to a woman, But that was because Jewish society in some ways had gone beyond the Scriptures. The Scriptures do not teach that men should avoid women or never speak to them.

Jesus disregarded those societal restraints. And the fact that she was a Samaritan didn't really help anything. The book we now know as the New Testament is primarily based on some writings that were written from around 40 to 100 years after Jesus's death. Scholars suggest that we only have about 15 percent of the literature that was written about Jesus in those first few centuries. Now, I'm going to be a little pedantic here.

Technically speaking, the New Testament is not a book, it's a collection of books. And no, the New Testament was not still being written in the middle of the second century. Even most liberal scholars agree with that, let alone for centuries after. The scholarly consensus is that basically everything that we have in the New Testament was written by the end of the first century. The most liberal of unbelieving scholarship may want to push back a couple of books, like Second Timothy, into the early second century.

But this is based really on presuppositions about the content of the letter, not actually anything drawn from the evidence itself. The claim that we have only about 15% of what the early Church wrote is probably true, actually. We know that the Christians were prolific writers even from the beginning. But the way this is presented is almost as if the rest of these books that we don't have were viewed as equally authoritative and equally candidates for what would be considered scripture. And this just isn't true.

Just because something was written in that early period doesn't mean it was authoritative, doesn't mean it was considered possibly scripture, and it doesn't mean that we're missing out on some instruction from God because it's not in our Bibles. Well, in 1896, some fragments of ancient papyrus books were found in Egypt, and scholars determined that they were written at around the same time as some of the rest of the books of the Bible were written, and they were about Mary Magdalene. It's too long to talk about here, but the TLDR is that Mary Magdalene came to the apostles and tried to tell them about some of the teachings that Jesus had entrusted to her. Some of the apostles back her up, but Peter is very uncomfortable being taught or led by a woman. So just think about it for a second.

Here we have a record of a debate of what role women were going to play in the early Christian church? Would they follow the norms of the culture at the time where men prohibited women from equal participation? Or would they follow the more egalitarian path that Jesus seems to have established? Her final phrase in that clip, the egalitarian path that Jesus seems to have established, is just a pure assertion. She's provided no real evidence to support this idea.

So what she's talking about is the so-called Gospel of Mary. This is a third century Gnostic text that actually has absolutely nothing to do with the biblical accounts of Christ, His life, and His ministry. To make any claims about the beliefs or practices of the early church from this third century partially found document is a complete wild leap of logic. And again, Amy here makes some basic errors. It's actually not clear that the Mary in the gospel of Mary is actually Mary Magdalene.

There's debate about that. And Peter, while yes, he ends up rejecting her teaching, partially because she's a woman, it's also primarily because what she's teaching is in contradiction to what the Lord Himself had taught Peter and the other apostles. So it's not some clear presentation of a pro-patriarchal Peter versus the egalitarian Mary over roles in the Church. Again, this is a late document that was never received by anyone as canon scripture, which we will deal with more in a later clip. There is evidence that the early church was egalitarian.

Women did act as priests and leaders within the church. The New Testament itself is full of women leaders like Mary and Prisca and Junia. Even Paul called Junia the foremost among the Apostles. It's full of women leaders. She can only name three, the same three that basically everyone appeals to.

Not once is Mary Magdalene or any of the other Marys identified or referred to as a leader, an elder, apostle, or in any other term that signifies leadership or authority. Second, she refers to Prissa or Priscilla, depending on which translation you have. This is really just laughable because this particular Prissa, we only have three references of her being mentioned, where Paul refers to her with her husband in three of his closing greetings, in Romans 16.3, 1 Corinthians 16.19, and 2 Timothy 4.19. The claim is often made by egalitarians that Prisca and her husband Aquila must have been church leaders because the greetings to them in Romans and 1 Corinthians say that the church meets in their house and they are called fellow workers by the Apostle Paul. But this is an entirely unnecessary inference.

The more likely meaning is exactly what it says, that the church meets in their house. This is likely because they were a wealthy family and had a larger home that was capable of being a space where the whole church could meet, not because they are some sort of co-pastor team and they are leaders of the church. And last she mentions Junia. Of course, Junia has to be brought up. Entire books have been written on this topic, but to put it simply, no.

Firstly, Paul is speaking about two individuals, not just Junia. He mentions Andronikos and Junia. Second, the key phrase in Greek is hoitanas eisen episemoi entois apostolois and this can be translated in two ways. Either they are well known by the apostles, for example how the ESV and the CSB translate it, or that they are outstanding or of note among the apostles. So these are the top three choices that come to her mind when she wants to defend the ideal of female leadership in the New Testament Church.

Hopefully we can all see what a flimsy argument this is. And this is consistently the pattern with egalitarian arguments. They go to the circumstantial passing comments about women instead of the passages that deal with the topic directly. And that's because every time we do deal with those didactic teaching passages on the roles of men and women, we see that they unquestionably teach male headship. Remember a few episodes ago when we talked about foundations, how one person establishes an idea, and then subsequent generations build on top of that idea?

You can see that happening here. Paul was raised with the belief that Eve had sinned, and thus, all women were incapable of leadership or even of being considered on equal footing with men. Again, we have basic errors regarding the story of the fall and Paul's interpretation of it. Paul actually never lays the blame for the fall of mankind on Eve. In fact, he avoids saying directly that Eve sinned rather than that she was deceived.

Everywhere he lays the guilt for sin in the fall at the feet of Adam. It was Adam's sin that condemned mankind, not Eve's deception. And that's because Adam was a patriarch and was responsible for his wife's physical and spiritual protection and as federal head responsible for the whole human race. And Paul grounds male leadership in Eve's deception only secondarily. Primarily he grounds male headship in the fact that Adam was created first and then Eve as 1st Timothy 2 says, and I do not permit a woman to teach or have authority over a man but to be in silence, for Adam was formed first, then Eve.

In other words, there's a clear hierarchy established by God even in the order of creation itself, since Genesis 2 explicitly tells us that God made the woman to be a helper suitable to the man. In the early 300s, something happened that would change the course of history forever. A Roman emperor converted to Christianity. Constantine the Great took Christianity from being a tiny, disorganized, persecuted minority to being the official religion of the Roman Empire. He wanted a very tidy, organized body of doctrine.

So in the year 325, he convened the Council of Nicaea. This council was a meeting of all male bishops, whose job it was to standardize the until then very unstandard new faith. Again, this is just wrong. Constantine did not make Christianity the official religion of the empire. That was the Emperor Theodosius in 380.

Someone who is this consistently wrong, about the most basic, minute facts, things that a 10 second Google search would clear up should not be trusted when it comes to answering theological questions of this nature. And while yes, Constantine called the Council of Nicaea, he had nothing to do with the actual proceedings of the council. He wanted the Aryans and the non-Aryans to work out their disagreements, and the history indicates that he was actually more on the Aryan side, even though the council definitively ruled opposed to the Arians. And he only called male bishops to the council because that's all there was. There never were female bishops.

There were a few more councils convened where these men determined which of the many existing accounts were going to make it into the official church canon. They chose the books that we see today. This is pure mythology. Nicaea had nothing to do with selecting the canon of scripture, and the councils of Carthage and Hippo affirmed what was the common practice of the Church regarding the New Testament canon. But there was no vote or long debate about what books were going to be included in the New Testament at these councils.

It simply didn't happen. No one was debating or proposing that the Gospel of Mary, for example, should be included. It just didn't happen. You can go online and read the canons and decrees of these councils yourself and see. The primary canon debate in these councils was actually about the Old Testament canon, not the New.

The New Testament canon was essentially fixed by the beginning of the third century, without any decree of any council. The fourth century councils came along and either had nothing to do with it, like Nicaea, or simply affirmed the existing practice of the church. Isn't it interesting to think about a version of the multiverse where the gospel of Mary made it into the Bible instead of the epistles of Paul? What about a world where men and women had convened in equal numbers in Nicaea to determine which books were going to make it into the canon? What if that version of Christianity had gotten I wonder if she realizes her double standard here.

She's complaining about Paul as this awful misogynist hating and oppressing women, But earlier she was using his writings to defend the idea that there were female leaders all over the New Testament. And in Paul's greeting at the end of the Book of Romans, where she thinks he calls Junia the foremost of the apostles, he mentions and greets by name Phoebe, Prisca, Mary, Trephanea, Trophosia, Pursus, and Julia, and sends greetings to the mother of Rufus and the sister of Nerus. And he calls these women fellow workers, workers in the Lord, beloved and saints. So which is it, Amy? Did Paul hate and demonize women, or did he greet them and love them and call them apostles?

Pick one. You can't have both. Or you can recognize that both of these extremes—calling them apostles and being a misogynist—are both false mischaracterizations of scripture. Combine that with Greco-Roman norms and you get early Christian church fathers who said things like Woman you shall turn to your husband and he shall rule over you and do you not know that you are Eve? God's sentence hangs still over all your sex and his punishment weighs down upon you You are the devil's gateway because of the death you merited even the Son of God had to die.

Woman, you are the gate to hell. Woman is a misbegotten man and has a faulty and defective nature in comparison to his. To put it briefly, one must be on one's guard with every woman, as if she were a poisonous snake and the horned devil. It is improper for a woman to speak in an assembly, no matter what she says, even if she says admirable things or even saintly things. That is of little consequence since they come from the mouth of a woman.

Now, this is pretty extreme misogyny. I went to church every single Sunday of my life and thank goodness I never heard anything like this. The problem here is that she seems incapable of differentiating between patriarchy and misogyny. I agree, some of those quotes were a little extreme. And of course, there have been and are abuses and mistreatment of women today.

We're not calling for anyone to hate or mistreat women. But that isn't inherent to the position of Patriarchy. Patriarchy is the rule of men in all of society, family, church, and state, for the good of all, including women. It's actually one of the means by which God protects women. The fact is, God made a patriarchal world, and as such, the rule of men will be inevitable.

The question is, will it be a kind and gracious patriarchy as the Bible prescribes, or will it be a tyrannical and abusive patriarchy as happens when the biblical standard is rejected and you have men for instance beating up women in fighting sports all in the name of equality. So in conclusion what we need is more patriarchy not less, but we need a biblical patriarchy grounded in God's Word. And we shouldn't let this woman and those like her dissuade us from following the scriptures in the standards God has set on who should be in authority. If scripture is sufficient, and we believe that it is, then we will go to the sufficient scriptures to see who should be in authority in the home, in the church, and in the state. And when we do that, we will see that the testimony of Scripture is always, you should have qualified men in positions of authority.

That's all the time we have for today. If you would like to contact me directly, you can do so. I'm on X at R. Bosley, 1689. And if you would like to learn more about church and family life, you can do so at churchandfamilylife.com.

Thanks. See you next time.