At last, we come to the end of our series on complex and controversial New Testament passages as it relates to women and/or “gender roles.” We will conclude our series with Titus 2:1-8. In my personal experience with the church, this has been one of the least cited passages in this series. In fact, my awesome mother-in-law brought the passage to my attention most recently so I thought I would conclude with it.

Before reading the passage in question, let’s start with the context of the letter. Paul wrote this letter to a man named

At last, the last of the “household codes” – this time, from Peter rather than Paul.

Let’s begin at the beginning – to whom does Peter address this letter?

“Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ,

To God’s elect, exiles scattered throughout the provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to be obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled with his blood:

Onto the second of the so-called “household codes.” I already wrote about Ephesians 5 at length here if you’re curious; it would be good background reading for this post. Colossians contains many parallels with Ephesians. There are three of these passages in the New Testament, two written by Paul and one written by Peter.

Household codes in the New Testament world were common and expected ways of being for all household members. In a world largely dominated by the male, elite patriarchy, men were

In this series, we’ll now transition to the so-called “household codes” which appear in various forms three times in the New Testament (Ephesians 5, Colossians 3, 1 Peter 3). In the context of what a marriage between followers of Christ ought to look like, Ephesians 5 is the most detailed, so let’s start here. As with all the articles in this series, my intention is to briefly provide what I consider to be the most convincing egalitarian interpretations for this passage. There are books upon books written on these topics – I encourage you to dive in deep. But for our purposes here, I will attempt brevity.

My first quarter of seminary, I took a biblical interpretation class. We were given a classic assignment: the exegesis paper. So, being me, I decided to choose a super simple-to-understand passage to start off my seminary career: 1 Timothy 2:8-15. Kidding. It’s probably one of the most controversial New Testament passages. Even so I needed to know what it really meant.

Buckle up – this one’s a doozy, my friends. 1 Corinthians 11 is perhaps one of the most convoluted passages of Scripture. Why? Because Paul seems to directly contradict himself in the space of about 15 verses. Scholars have wrestled with these verses for centuries. I recommend you read the passage for yourself first (NIV):

When first studying egalitarian theology (or theologies more accurately), many women have told me they’ve been afraid. Fear lurked in their hearts - that they were not being faithful Christians, that they were doubting the accuracy of Scripture. They feared other people’s words, and that God would be mad at them for not taking God’s Word seriously. They had been so conditioned that anything outside of “complementarian” arguments was theologically suspect that they worried they were diverging from their faith by simply trying to learn another perspective.

So many important church fathers were influenced by the theology of women, one must wonder why modern protestants tend to only recognize the names of the men. Augustine, whose theological works continue to heavily influence Western theology today, credits his

The existence of female deacons and the designation of widowhood as a church office find their roots in the New Testament. Paul addresses female deacons (3:11) and widows (5:1-16) in his