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Egalitarians and Complementarians BOTH have so much to learn from this Scholar... · How to Faith a Life Podcast with Faith Womack

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: If you're listening to the How to Faith a Life podcast, where we wrestle with questions on how to live a life study, from everything from books to Bible studies, even the Bible studies next.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: This is your place to wrestle with the hard questions and dive deep into what scripture really says for the Christian woman.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure you subscribe to this podcast and your favorite podcast remaining services.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Review this podcast so other people can find it and share with other believers who want to ask the hard questions.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: Now we'll have to let's begin.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: Hi friends, and welcome back to the How to Faith a Life podcast.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Today's interview is a really fun conversation with one of my favorite authors, Dr.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: William J.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Webb or Dr.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Bill Webb.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: I've reviewed and mentioned his books multiple times in my content.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: I read his Slaves, Women and Homosexuals last year, which outlines his hermeneutic on how slavery went through a redemptive movement throughout scripture from the Old Testament being allowed, condoned with higher standards to by the New Testament, Paul writing Philimon pleading for omissimus' freedom.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Philimon was a slave owner and Onesimus was his slave.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: Paul met him in prison and then wrote to Philomen asking for him to free onisimus.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: So there we see a gradual redemptive movement from the beginning of the Bible to the end.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: He argues the same thing to be true of women in the church and women's involvement in the church and ministry, but argues this in a very gracious way, which was helpful for me as I was dealing with questions around women's roles in the church and in ministry and reconciling people like Deborah or Phoebe or Junior.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so his gracious wrestlings really helped me struggle and ask questions with love and grace along the way.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: Now he uses the same hermeneutic, and he'll correct me here in this interview.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: He uses the same hermeneutic on homosexuality and that lifestyle, but he argues that you don't see a growing acceptance of this lifestyle, but a continued, steadfast stand against the lifestyle throughout scripture.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: With all that said, I thoroughly enjoy this conversation with the humble, intelligent, brilliant Dr.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: Webb.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: He's just as charming and intelligent and kind as his books lead him on to be.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I pray this conversation blesses you and encourages, inspires you, maybe even challenges you like it challenges me in my own hermeneutic as you listen into this conversation.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: I should also note that by definition, having this conversation will bring questions from some of my audience saying, Well, Faith, do you think that women should be ordained because you're interviewing somebody that does?
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so I want to clarify that I think it is important for both egalitarians and complimentarians, those who do think women should be pastors and those who don't, to hear from Dr.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: Webb and to learn from him.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Because he does something that not everyone does with his reading is ultimately when we have these conversations and these debates, we love to isolate certain texts that support our standpoint.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: And he has done the best job that I have seen evaluating the text as a whole.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: Why does Paul use and work with alongside and Sin and Phoebe and Priscilla and Junior and use them as leaders in the church, but then say that women need to be silent.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: He he does wrestle with the texts more faithfully than I've seen most scholars on both sides do.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so that is why I'm interviewing him today as someone that will get us all thinking and all wrestling, not trying to make a point or trying to make an argument.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I do want to specify that because I think it's really hard for us to be, we tend to be triggered on hot topics like this, whether it is about, you know, if women should be pastors or not, or if it's about predestination or any of the hot topics, we make the debates a whole lot less about what the text is and a whole lot more about what we think the Bible says this.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: And by definition, saying the Bible says this, you're taking one text instead of taking the text as a whole.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so I do think no matter where you stand on the topic, we have so much to learn from Dr.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: Webb and the ways that he asks questions with grace and love, whether it's a war text or on women in ministry, he doesn't neglect passages or questions.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: He's willing to uncover those deep, dark, hidden passages that we want to ignore.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: And that is why we have him here today.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: But let's just start the conversation.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, friends.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to the How to Faith a Life podcast.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: Today I'm here with a very special guest.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: Dr.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: Bill Webb is married to Marilyn with three grown children and a dog, receiving his PhD from Dallas Theological Seminary.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: He's a professor at Tyndale Seminary, but he's also worked as a pastor, a chaplain, and professor, impacting the church and really our generation with rich insights and edifying our hermeneutic around tough topics.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: In addition to conference speaking ministry, he also has published many books, including Slaves, Women, and Homosexuals, which I've reviewed numerous times here on How to Faith a Life.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: It really helped me shape some of the ways in which I wrestle with women's roles in the church and in Christian culture.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: But also to many of his other books, he published bloody, brutal, and barbaric wrestling with troubling vortex, which I mentioned in a recent YouTube video, and I'm currently in the middle of reading.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm on page 125.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: But Dr.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: Webb, I gotta say thank you so much for being here on the How to Faith a Life podcast.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: Well, thank you, Faith.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's a pleasure to be with you.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: I gotta say, um, when I turned on the camera and you're seeing your face, even though we're on the interwebs, I got like a little nervous and excited because you're somebody that I've read, I've thought about, I've always wanted to kind of pick your brain on some of these, you're not like afraid to talk about the tough topics.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I really appreciate that.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: Some people want to kind of just glaze over war texts or tough passages on women, and um you confront them head on, and you're not afraid to acknowledge some of the toughness with those passages.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: So, Dr.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: Webb, for anyone that doesn't know or hasn't heard me ramble about your redemptive movement hermeneutic, will you define it?
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: I I guess the uh uh this is the book where I kind of started it in it in its inception, at least.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: I am working on another book.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: This one's entitled Slaves, Women and Homosexuals.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but I have another one in the back of my mind I'd like to do, and that's uh 1,011 Reasons Why You Should Never Write a Book entitled Slaves, Women and Homosexuals.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: I got far more reasons, and I'm just trying to pare it down.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: So but it in this, I um as I wrestled with a number of uh ethically difficult texts, uh, let's put it where it is, that just didn't seem to square with a God who is ultimately loving, ultimately powerful, ultimately capable.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: And and I'm I'm looking at it and I, you know, saying, well, you know, couldn't you have done a little bit better treatment of slaves and some of the legislation and that sort of thing?
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: Doesn't seem to be um uh uh exactly ultimate ethic in any any respect.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: This uh was kind of the start of it, and it was uh the impetus was my own.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh actually, I wasn't really trying to change the world or anything.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: I was trying to especially retain my faith in not so much in God.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: I think I still have my faith in God, but the fact that God was working within scripture redemptively.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: And some of these texts uh sure didn't seem to be like that.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: And uh what what I started working with was an idea of um reading these texts within the ancient social context.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: Now that's not entirely new, but um for most Christians, simply reading the text within the literary text up and down the page, wow, if if we can get them doing that, that's that's super, rather than just cherry-picking something and and making it sound like, oh, you know, this is you know, this is written uh from Texas, you know, uh or wherever.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but to read something up and down the page, but uh what what what I started doing was reading these texts, especially from an ethical perspective, within the ancient near Near Eastern or Greco-Roman, uh, the ancient world context, and all of a sudden, boom, you know, oh wow, you you start seeing uh you start seeing not a begrudgeoned God that is is an ethical miser of sort, but you see the generous um spirit and redemptive spirit of God.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so when I would read those texts, um, you know, you read a text uh like the the beating text in Exodus that uh the the owner can you know can beat their slave within a hairbreadth of their life, and there's no recrimination.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh as long as they get up in a few days and and and and walk, you know.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm thinking, oh, you know, uh you're allowed to blick beat the living schmuck out of your slave, and uh as long as they you know live after a few days, you know.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um and uh just just some difficult things that's uh uh and and we could go on with a bunch of other slavery texts, uh but when you s you know when I'm when I'm reading that way, I'm reading it in terms of my contemporary horizon and my abolitionist understanding that abolitionism is a better ethic, and yes, I think it is, uh, and I think uh there are very few theologians, I don't even know a living theologian today, who would argue that slavery is an acceptable ethic, uh, let alone a better ethic than uh freedom, you know, to uh and and support of individual purpose and that sort of thing.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so yeah, it was a journey to try and say, hmm, what are you doing, God, in these texts?
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a really fruitful journey for me to read alongside you.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: You do a great job of simplifying and pointing out how easy it is for us to read texts and be so anachronistic.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you did it again in Bloody Brutal and Barbaric.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's just our natural tendency to read into our ethics, into the passage.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: But you have great charts also throughout your books.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: I've noticed that.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: Your charts really help.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you design them or not, but it really helps me because sometimes you're saying things and it's like, whoo, like you are so smart.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: And then I just look at the visuals and it really helps that the charts of the redemptive movement hermeneutic, which I should say, it's really interesting for me to read you at like someone once said when I was describing the redemptive movement hermeneutic to them, they said, Well, a lot of people apply that to homosexuality.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, Well, Dr.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: Webb doesn't, and he defends that in his book.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's interesting to think, like with your, like you said, with your title, it's triggering, but in different ways than I think readers might suspect.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: Did you get that kind of feedback after publication?
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'm looking at that lineup, the three uh parts of the title, slaves, women, and homosexuals.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, some people uh especially uh might be inclined to say that I I take and accept homosexuality and think that that's the biblical perspective.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I do apply a redemptive movement hermeneutic to those texts, but but it's it's different than the than the women text, and it's different than the slavery text.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: Because what happens with the women in slavery text is that you move from a more restrictive domain ethically to one that is far more um open and inviting and uh uh and and sustaining an ethical journey and extension.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: Not so with the homosexuality text.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: It is not that in the ancient world you have um the uh uh uh you know shutting down homosexuality, and in the Bible you have uh glimmers or even uh to to openness to homosexuality.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: Rather, it's the reverse.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: So uh you uh you have a mixed bag in the ancient world.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh in the ancient East, in Greco-Roman, there is some acceptance of homosexuality, and in scripture it goes carte blanc, no.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um so that's there is there is movement, but it's movement in in quite a different direction.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's movement in a con more conservative direction, if you will.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: Was that a that's that's not to say if and I I I want to get it in here, that's not to say that we hate homosexuals.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: You know, uh, if you look at Paul's sinless, we're all on there, you know, yeah.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: Gluttons and uh and uh gossip and all those kinds of things.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: So uh and uh, you know, the there is a huge misconception in terms of uh pastoral engagement of the subject.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, I I leave it for you to push on however you wish.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: No, um I just I find it very interesting as somebody that grew up in conservative circles because you kind of tend to hear, well, once you start ordaining women, I've literally heard it called, and you probably have heard it called the same thing.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's a downward like mudslide, and you just you fall into everything else and you start affirming everything else.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: And there really is very different, it's a totally different hermeneutic to affirm the homosexual lifestyle than to ordain women.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it is very different, and you do a really good job of differentiating that clearly while also dealing with really rich wrestlings with culture.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you have the oversimplification of these topics sometimes in the texts that I was reading, and you didn't oversimplify it, but you still made it easy for people like me to understand and hopefully for regular podcast listeners that don't have doctorates.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's good because uh I I do have a few friends who tried me to put in more pictures, you know.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I enjoy the charts, that's for sure.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: That's good, that's good.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: Now, how do you feel that the church like at large really could benefit from your redemptive movement hermeneutic?
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: In terms of broad scope, I I for me it's one of the best answers to um to new atheism and new atheism.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, if I can just back up and say historically, Christians, uh, Christian or theists and atheists would get in a room and uh they would be behind two, you know, proponents would be behind two lecterns, and and the one would toss one argument and the other respond to that argument, and they would be philosophical arguments, you know.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I'm a theist, so I'm presenting the uh the teleological argument for the existence of God, you know, and and then the other person responds by you know taking a shot at that and throwing out some others.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh with new atheism, they said, why?
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: Why do we even need to do it?
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: They go they go to the source to scripture and show how how in the world do you believe that God wrote this?
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: This is so ethically corrupt, you know, and and inhumane, that um as with the war book, for example, um, what kind of God would kill women, children, the the lame, you know, the the infirmed.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um you know, I read those texts and I go, oh, or I read the slavery text and I go, oh, these are seldom preached passages.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: When when I'm when I'm working with this with a bunch of pastors, I hold up a$20 bill or a$50, and I say, if anybody has preached this passage, come to me afterwards and it's yours.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I've done that literally hundreds of times, and I've never lost one.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: I believe it.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: Who who wants to talk about that?
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: But if you start reading those texts within an ancient world, in an ancient world context, you start you start seeing um uh, for example, the text in Exodus about about um the the beating text.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: Well, just down from that text is is another one about slaves that if in in beatings or in in any way you maim a slave, okay, you you disfigure them.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: That slave goes free.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: Now that's a huge part of the social repress repression uh process that uh if if you don't like something and you're that a slave has done, and you would you would often take them before the community and uh you know if they'd said something you'd lob off part of the tongue, if they uh if they tried to run away, you you'd cut off part of the leg.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: Literally, we're not we're not you know, this is uh it's hard to imagine, but they would disfigure slaves in order to make statements and uh and be statements of social control for the whole community.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: But scripture comes along and says, okay, you can beat so much, but not to death, okay, and to death would be the privilege of any other slave owner, okay.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: So it does draw back.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: And and then if you maim them, they go free.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: Well, whoa, where is that in the engineering story?
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's not there.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: They uh could maim and and disfigure slaves and and did.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: It was it was part of uh the whole social control thing.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: So all of a sudden you start hearing these these wonderful little whispers of God's redemptive spirit coming through, and you go, whoa, okay, this is uh, and sometimes it gets so strange that you say, Wow, uh there seems to be something um theologically funky here.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: And then of course you have to say, Well, what is the logical extension of this?
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: Well, if you extend that, it it goes to the abolition of slavery.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and that that is actually the way legal process goes in many countries.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh our our ethics are typically uh incremental.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: Most of us are saying we need to turn the corner on on the the way that we make energy, okay?
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and we're destroying the planet, and it is an ethical issue because it hurts the poor the most.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, they can't buy uh the purifiers uh at home, even with wildfires.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: They can't, you know, they can't they they can't sustain life in in um in many ways.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: It it just it it is um it becomes a social ethical problem and uh uh let alone problem to our planet.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: We're trying to turn the corner there.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I think when when my dad came back from Johns Hopkins University and worked in public health in Canada, um uh one thing he did with government was to move incrementally, you know, just a little bit.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um and by the way, the whole petroleum thing was to say we need to move incrementally.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so um, because we're not gonna make it in in leaps and bounds steps.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's take it's already taken years to get to where we are.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: But this if you think about the smoking laws, uh, very similar.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: And my dad spent 20 years trying to get the skull and crossbone on the back of a cigarette package, okay, to get that through parliament and and that process.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: And eventually it did.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I've been saying to my to my students, you watch, it's coming.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: You watch, it's coming.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: Eventually, they will ban smoking in vehicles where there are uh uh young persons or or children who do not have a say over the transportation, okay, that adults can't smoke in vehicles uh with children.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: And uh sure enough, uh Canadian laws have done it.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: In other words, it's it's a logical extension of um of understanding that not only smoking but secondhand smoking uh is.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Is problematic.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: And at any rate, a lot of laws move have to move incrementally.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: And when you think of William Wilberforce, William Wilberforce was a parliamentarian in Britain who was the major push with this.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: And he never saw slavery laws repealed.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: The big incremental step that he was able to accomplish in his life was getting the slave ships away from the Gold Coast of Africa.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: So that they were the British Navy were engaged in stopping the ships coming in and just grabbing people and putting them on there and taking them to holding places where they sold them off.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, it was a logical extension of that to go to go to abolitionism.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: But so I often tell my students, I want you to, I want you to think about some area of ethics, all kinds of areas of ethics in our world where we need the breath of God's redemptive spirit to take things further.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, do a William Wilbershorse thing in your generation and with uh God's help and God's power, but also uh bringing together the cooperation of all kinds of people.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: You're not gonna make it on your own, you're gonna have to do this as a team.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I love that.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's good and encouraging.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: Now, in the foreword of Bloody Brutal and Barbaric, I was really shocked to hear you mention about the loss of your son, and I'm really sorry about that.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: I know there's nothing like I can say to um really like help or comfort or anything, but I thought it was really interesting how you kind of plugged how it affected the or impacted the way that you viewed Wartex and other troubling texts about the Bible.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm so excited to read about that.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: I think you said it was like coming up soon in one of the chapters, but will you share with us a little bit about how grieving and loss impacted maybe your ability to ask those hard questions with more freedom or something?
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it it allowed me to understand that the pain of losing a son, which happened over uh 12 or 13 years, he died at age 26.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: He was fine and very athletic up till about age 13, last 13 years of his life.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_01: He slowly uh degenerated um cognitively as well as physically.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: So he was eventually in a wheelchair and and uh was a quadriplegic uh eva eventually and uh cognitively like a preschooler.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um and to watch that go on, of course, uh that is um that became the well that broke me uh in many ways.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: I could be driving down the road and boom, I couldn't see the road in front of me, and I have to pull over, literally.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um I was not a person given to crying, and that changed all that.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: That messed me up big time.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um what what it did was give me a sensitivity to reading pain within the text and understanding some of God's own pain within the text.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and when you read the war texts, what is one of the redemptive things, now we get into a lot of redemptive things within those war texts, and you think, what good can come out of these?
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: Well, oh, just hold on.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: I I love to just unpack the redemptive elements in there, but one of the very curious redemptive elements in there is that is the tears of God.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um and uh that uh, you know, when we're working with pain in our lives, uh God is not off gulfing somewhere totally uh oblivious to the pain in our lives.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: And that uh that realization uh Jirgen Woltman uh the crucified God is is a beautiful work theologically on it.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: But uh that realization that um that God is impacted by the pain of this world uh is ultimately what it didn't heal me.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: This was the 10-year anniversary this this summer.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: And both my Meryl and I still cried and and and uh it didn't heal, but it helped to it helped to um to soften my anger against God.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um because it's hard to stay angry at someone who is in pain with you because of your pain.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: And that's a different portrait of God.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things that we see in the war texts is that God is in pain and crying because of the loss of human life, but not only for the loss of Israel, his army, quote unquote, but also the loss of Israel's enemies in war.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_01: Whoa, okay, is there any ancient or eastern god who does that?
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, it is so uh horrifically vitriolic and and and nationalistic and blah blah blah.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, and you just so hats off to John.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_01: He he taught me a lot more than I ever taught him.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: You opening up the foreword with that really kind of took me off guard.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't something that I knew about you, but also really opened my ears even more to be willing to hear your wrestlings on things like war.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll spell this out just because I don't want the algorithms to not like me for this, but R-A-P-E.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: Even your dealings with that chapter were very gentle, but still willing to acknowledge vulgarities that we didn't even know existed in the culture time and in the text itself.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: You handled that very gracefully and said things like that, like no one gets men of God for the other times that women aren't R-A-P-E.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, God was heartbroken over that as well.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, things like that.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: Like we would love to hold our own pain against God, but we don't think about the pain that God's grieving all the time over that same pain.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: And this podcast is sponsored by Mr.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: Penn.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: If you've never heard me mention them before, then you are in for a retreat.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: Mr.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: Penn is my favorite pen and highlighter brand to use in my Bible notes, journals, and really just all over my favorite pen brand.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: It is still a pinch me moment every single day that they even want to work with me.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: This brand early on to do it out from the pack.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: I think my subscribers originally mentioned them to me, but it is the most quality and also cheapest when it comes to price brand out there for pens and highlighters for your Bible.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: My favorite right now are the clicky highlighters that I use in my Bible notes.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: I love the click and very like I pull them and I love to use them.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: And the colors all look so good together.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: They're just beautiful muted penals.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: I use them every minute in my Bible journaling, but especially as I'm going in depth to the mums, I only read from Mr.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: Pen highlighters because they're just so beautiful.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: And now my mom's notes are all looking so empty and gorgeous as I flip through the books of the mums.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: If you check them out at go mr.pen on Instagram, they're all over Amazon.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: So you can also just type in Mr.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: Penn on the Amazon search bar and find them there.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: Receive them in your mailbox in like two days.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's crazy.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: Or you can find them at mrpen.com.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_00: And thank you so much to Mr.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: Penn for sponsoring this podcast.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now let's get back to this conversation with Dr.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: Webb.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you you once you dive into that area, you realize that um it is love that makes us vulnerable to pain.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_01: And uh the reason we grieved and still grieve about John is because we loved him.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: We loved him deeply.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_01: We you know, you love your own children.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: Most parents do.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and uh and if you think about a God who is infinitely uh who loves infinitely, then the potential for uh uh pain that he has in connectedness to our broken world is infinite.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so that that um yeah, it doesn't fix things, it doesn't take away the pain, but it says, hey, I'm I'm not going to uh I okay, some days I do get angry at God.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_01: I I I will tell them, but then I'll I'll say, okay, I know where you're at.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_01: I know that you're you're in pain because of this brokenness as well.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's beautiful.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: I think a lot of people can relate to you and will be even more excited to hear your thoughts.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: Just hearing your heart.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, thanks for making me cry.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: Wasn't expecting that.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_01: My apologies.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: No, no.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: I really, I just uh it's so beautiful and you explain things so well.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: Where I stumble over words, I'm just amazed at your clarity and precision with them.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: You don't waste them, that's for sure.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_00: Now, tell us about your ministry and teaching at Tyndale Seminary.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: If people want to take online classes, and I hear this all the time, could they take some classes from you?
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh well, they could, but you know, I'm we we sometimes have coffee and QA's.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_01: If if they're in my class and we do have a coffee and QA online and they ask too hard a question, you know, then I'll I'll put on my blue jazz cap and say, okay, you know, give me a break.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_01: I you know, I I don't get paid enough to do this.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_01: So I know they it it uh there I I do actually uh um three courses on biblical interpretation, I do a course on wrestling with troubling text, I do a course on um uh the book of Revelation.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_01: I I love that one.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah, yeah, which is when when you think about uh pain, that's that's really important for reading the book of Revelation because theodicy uh is is uh it's not the end times book per se.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh sorry to those who like to go that direction, uh, but it's it's more about theodicy, apocalypse is about theodicy, wrestling with God in a world that's evil, and and how do we make sense of that?
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so uh some yeah, I I teach a handful of courses there, and all of them are online.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I have students from uh I had students as old as 90.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_01: I had a uh a Coptic priest in in Egypt.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_01: And uh he would get in there and and we'd have some fun.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_01: But yes, I have students from all over the world, uh, mostly Canadians, but US, Canada, and uh and and broad broader.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, that's so neat.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Hong Kong, uh, Taiwan, um, you know, India, uh, and uh and even we even let people from Newfoundland in.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_01: St.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_01: John's, Newfoundland, okay.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_01: You know.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's a great, great school.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I'm not to uh not to discredit other schools.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_01: There are many great seminaries, and and I would wish you God's uh grace and and and guidance as you as you if you're interested in following his lead in this area.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_01: But yes, always happy to engage students, and uh it's a delight.
• 35:35
  unknown: Yeah.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: What is some of your advice for women today wanting to study the Bible deeper and trying to grow in their knowledge and understanding of what it looks like to have a hermeneutic and to be mindful about hermeneutics?
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: What would be some of your advice for particularly women today?
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things that helped change my mind in that area was certainly reading it with a redemptive movement hermeneutic.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_01: That okay, there's an incremental ethic here.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_01: This is not ultimate ethic in in many of these texts.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so it it is so important to hear these texts within the social context in order to get a sense of God's redemptive spirit and where he's going, you know, and and what does he want to do with uh with the application of these texts.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_01: So that's that's of course very important.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_01: I have I've had many students as well as I've worked with um uh senior pastors who are who are female who've chronicled their journey um extensively.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_01: And uh you know, I take my hat off.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's it is a um it is a journey to uh to which you um could easily fall by the side, you know, be slain with a thousand swords, you know.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_01: This is not an easy journey and uh uh you would need uh you know an extra uh sense of God's purpose and grace and strength.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_01: And the women who um have done it and done it well um are um you know amazed me and and I uh uh I am deeply indebted to a number of women.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: When I w when I was studying in my PhD work, I I read commentaries by uh certain British scholars, uh American scholars, Canadian scholars, who were written by women.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_01: And and some of them were really good.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_01: And uh that started changing my mind, of course.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_01: But uh but um so so the the overarching approach to these texts is important.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_01: And if you adopt a redemptive movement, uh and and not simply a static reading as if it's got no correlation to what's going on in in the existing world.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_01: And that that allows me to say, hey, God did something really redemptive within a very restrictive world for women and was was bringing them a particular direction.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_01: So um the the broad sense is is important.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um the the other thing is typically those who want to restrict the ministry of women will do an exegesis, quote unquote, of five, six texts.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_01: And uh boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, bottom line is this.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, uh the reading of those texts it often uh doesn't have that redemptive women framework, uh, but even so, I I I what helped my journey uh in understanding changing my mind was uh to to look at every single text about women in scripture.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_01: Every single text and ask ask hard ethical questions about these texts, ask hard social ethical questions about these texts, and and and try to understand these texts better with within within an ancient world as well.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um and that I I'm committed to to every single text about women, not just the big five and out pops an answer.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and uh, and that was uh so those are two or three things.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_01: The women I've seen do well in pastoral ministry have also uh uh uh built a team, uh a team of support, not only within the immediate context, but within uh a larger support.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_01: And uh for for about ten years I I did uh uh I supported a local uh my local within the province of of Ontario and uh a dozen or so pastors and they we would gather two or three times a year and we would read stuff together, and two of them were um female senior pastors, and uh uh which is really good for for the for the guys in the group uh as much as uh as it was for for um the female pastors.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_01: They uh the I think there was uh so that you need a safe environment where you know you can you can vet things and and you can explore ideas and you can uh say, okay, you know, what are the options in this particular area?
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um how should it work pastorally in this area?
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um and uh uh it's it's been a delight to see um not easy answers, but but those are two or three things that are are I that I've seen that have been very helpful.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_00: I like that.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_00: Now I ask everybody this question, and it's just a Bible nerd's question.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_00: We're always looking for the best new commentaries and resources.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_00: What are your go-to commentaries when you're looking at a fresh new passage to teach or preach on?
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_00: Who do you like to use?
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_00: What do you like to use?
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_01: I love Craig Keener, who doesn't.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_01: Umard Marshall, an older generation, FF Bruce, older generation.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but um uh uh Craig Blomberg, he'd be on the other side of the issue in a few things, but uh very very good uh methodical uh um uh kind of person.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um Daryl Bach is uh is amazing.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I think he lives in Texas.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my goodness.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_01: Can anything good come from Texas?
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_01: Well, okay, there's Daryl.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_01: And it was it the stars that that play down there, I think hockey.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, hockey.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um so um i could go around the world, there are probably a hundred people uh players, but those are those are uh at least a a uh a good uh a good start uh in in that league.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um and it's not to say that I don't learn from say Jewish scholars uh and from uh even even reading uh new atheism people.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if you if you listen, uh you you learn um what's making them tick as well.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_01: And that's important if you're going to try and relate the text to our culture, you know, and say, you know, what's hindering this person from embracing the God of the Bible?
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and and uh um you know it you know what can what should the text own out of that?
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_01: And and sometimes there's a lot.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_01: And what where have they inflated it or inflamed it?
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you know.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um so uh so yeah, good reads within uh within the fold and uh you know outside as well.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much, Dr.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_00: Webb, for being here today on the How to Faith Life podcast.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_00: I know we've so benefited from your wisdom and just honesty through it all.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_00: You're you're not going to act like these aren't hard questions.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm I know we all really appreciate that.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you so much for being here.