Same, this was absolutely amazing 😂 There should be a sub for well executed prompts in the comment section like this one, kinda like r/redditsings 😃

No worries, I didn't consider your comment an attack on him but rather a friendly, valid and appropriate rebuttal of his positions.

Now that I found the time to look deeper into your points, the first one brought me to this page where his remarks on authenteo are examined in great detail - introducing hellenic astrology of all things as a potential game changer to my perspective on it.

The page also contains links to the authors' rebuttal to most of Mikes other videos, so I guess I'll be busy for quite some more months and my journey in this issue is far further away from being over than I was hoping for after Mikes exhaustive meta analysis :-/

At this point, the only thing I can say for sure is that I'm a bit confused about one thing: Paul puts such a stress on the man being the head of the woman especially within the boundaries of marriage (Eph. 5) - even going as far as to compare marriage to the relationship between God and the church and one-sidedly telling the wives to submit to their husband as to the Lord - but somehow leaves all that talk about different standings between men and women out of the issue of the hierarchical order within the church. If marriage is intended to depict God and his church, how much more the church itself? But if the author of the rebuttal page is right, then Paul didn't even intend the board of elders to consist predominantly of men.

Do you have any thoughts on this?

I'm very sceptical about bringing an infant into a life with pets instead of waiting for the child to get used to a world without it and experiencing it as a bonus. Because I assume that the former way causes the child to not know a world without the pet and therefore the pets passing creates a gap only fillable by other pets. Also, that upbringing makes the grief of the pet dying much, much worse than it already is without living your first years alongside it.

What's your experience with it? Was your son ever okay with not having a pet or were there times when he couldn't bear not having a pet around?

Would you trust God to work through sinful flesh driven mankind to write beneficial and unproblematic songs? And what about instrumental classical or movie music?

Even then, Psalms like Psalm 88 end on a low note.

I'm a bit worried that this sub fosters heavy resentment not only against the jw-organisation, but eventually also against organized religion per se and eclipses the option that there is a good religion out there as well. I'm wondering how a "former JW, now Christian"-post would fare, but apart from being in the small minority, I'm not sure it would gain enough traction to pop up in someone's feed.

Id be careful with making concessions where the Bible doesn't recommend any. With regards to the eating meat part it was about whether or not people doing so participate in idolatry, which is a sin. But unless the mother in this case can name a sin that she fears to stumble over depending on OPs hair length, this might just be a case outside of the scope of sin and obedience towards God and more of a personal taste that the mother wants to impose on her child. In that case, imo, OP wouldn't cause her mother to sin either way and so, she doesn't need to oblige.

I really appreciate your long post as I think it's very appropriate to go into the points raised by Mike with a similar depth as he did. Thank you so much for your extensive reflection on his points, I'm really looking forward to working it through and getting a deeper insight into the egalitarian response to him.

Unfortunately, I didn't find the time to do so yet and I'm not sure whether I'll get to it in the rest of the week. So this is just a heads-up that I didn't forget about this thread and that I'll definitely try to get back to it and I'd really appreciate you continuing the conversation as well.

Because in my experience so far, Mike has been amazingly neutral in his approach to the Bible, both in his Q&A-sessions and in the deeper topics. But I was also often surprised that the egalitarian position is really as weak as he makes it seem so in those cases, I wasn't sure whether that was actually the case or whether there were some things he didn't get to or treat equally in comparison to the sources he mentioned. So I really appreciate being able get a bigger picture of the issue at hand than Mike might have provided :-)

Sorry, my point was that nothing new will be gained from repeating the same question when it has already been asked several times in this subreddit. I was speaking out against starting a new post that nothing new will be gained from.

Also, I'm surprised that you point out the non-sexual love between couples. Is it your point to support non-sexual homosexual relationships, whatever they're called? Or merely for deep platonic relationships between members of the same sex? I'm a bit confused what area you're highlighting specifically here.

Ballet and Christian ministry can go hand in hand. In Germany, for example, there's the Christian Dance Force, combining Ballet/Contemporary Dance and worship most beautifully :-)

Dance is one way to express your God-given gift and to glorify God through, just like any other expressive art. It's just that that combination might yet be to be explored to it's full potential. And until then, it'll be in the shadow of the other expressive arts.

Okay, if you're forgiving them for twisting your words, I think it can very easily prevent misunderstandings and their evolution to point them out and tell them what you forgive them for instead of making such a blank statement of forgiveness and leaving it up to the forgiven to figure out what they were forgiven for. Besides not taking everything as an offense, leaving nothing up to implication is surely part of good communication skills and from what I read something you could learn something about as well :-)

Because from what I see, you having confidence in God's word is never mentioned as point of offense. gr3yh47 for example mentions about you making heterodox teachings look orthodox, making assumptions about Historical-Arm-5232 and stressing how others need to learn more or ask God before attempting to correct others without applying it to your position. The latter makes it look as if you wouldn't be criticized if people would ask God before criticizing you because you don't seem to see any point of correction in your writings.

So the issue is not God's wisdom but your elusiveness and maybe even lack of self-awareness when it comes to criticism. Did you ever wonder whether there's a tiny bit of fault in the way the conversation went that we can trace back to your behavior? Because I see no clue for that in any of your comments, so in case I'm wrong there, please show me the clues. And if there aren't any, then that's actually an issue far beyond anyone getting easily offended.

My issue is not in defending easily offended people but to prevent miscommunication that can easily lead to someone taking offense. And forgiving people without saying what they need forgiveness for is a safe way of causing such a miscommunication.

Okay, thank you for the information about/against being offended easily.

But I'd also like to talk about your idea of forgiving people without them asking for it. What made you think that there was any need for forgiveness from your side?

I admit that this was probably the wrong comment to write this under and I'm sorry for the confusion this caused. But the idea that you forgive people when they didn't ask to be forgiven and that you don't address the points they make but simply come across as "Oh you have so much left to learn".

We listen to God, read the Bible and strive for divine wisdom just as you do but for the mentioned reasons, your comments give of a "holier than thou"-impression, whether intentional or not. And that irks not only me, as you might have noticed.

"Who is wise and understanding among you? Let them show it by their good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom." (James 3,13)

For someone having wisdom in his name, your behavior towards criticism shows a total lack of the humility that is supposed to come from wisdom. Without any further explanation, you declare others to be in need of repentance for disagreeing with you as if you were God.

You are the one in need of repentance for that level of haughtiness and condescendence towards your siblings in Christ.

SO PUT YOUR BEST HORSE DOWN, EVRYBODY!

With a question that broad, you'll probably find the same or very similar answers here as you can find them in previous posts to the same topic (like here or here, to only name the ones from the last two months).

If you want to prevent starting from zero again, I'd recommend looking up the answers there and arguing from there.

Even if you didn't try to shut down discussion, by starting with the labels you effectively did so. And whether "talking against ignorance" is understood as personal or regarding ones position can be up to the interpretation of the adressed person, so they might have understood it as a personal attack, making you the first attacker here and not them.

Yes ONE Case of scripture is enough.

If we treat leading women as the exception they're depicted as (one leader among the dozens in all of biblical history, side by side with the leadership of the priest), I'm a bit more open to it, but still very reserved if we look at the rest of the Bible, especially the NT.

Miriam was also a leader.

If at all, she was a worship leader or leader of the women. But when she tried to assume the same leadership level as Moses had, God punished her with leprosy. So in the end, she was no leader the way an elder is a leader.

the women at the grave told the Apostles

Either way, they were evangelists of the most basic gospel, not preachers of the intricacies of theology. Giving a testimony and giving a sermon are two very different things.

Huldah the female prophet

Prophet, not a pastor/preacher. Since the Bible distinguishes between them in Eph. 4,11, so should we.

Judges were also spiritual in nature

So where do you see the difference between judges and priests at that time?

Also the Judges were overlapping

That would be absolutely new to me. The way Judges 2,18f. is worded (a judge was raised and died), it rather gives me the impression that there only ever was one judge at a time.

How many house churches were held at women's homes?

Probably several, but hospitable hosts arent equatable to knowledgeable preachers.

Why is there a difference between private and public roles?

A public role represents God's order in the public eye and has way more impact in the same timespan than the private role has, especially when it comes to teaching. A preacher can reach hundreds of people and make them spread his word much faster than a private teacher can, therefore that role is more prominent and influental and thus needs a closer look at the ones filling it.

here is no scripture that states women can do everything in a church but not speak at a pulpet.

1. Timothy 2 might just be the one scripture for that.

Nor not be a church leader?

1. Timothy 3 lists qualifications for church leaders, and some of them are only possible for men (man of one woman, good manager of his family).

even castrated himself to protect his ministry for having women leaders.

The only reasons I read for his self-castration are either a misunderstanding of Jesus' talk about eunuchs in Origens youth or to calm people who were sceptical of him tutoring a woman. Those seem to be the two most popular theories, but there's no relation of that to women in leadership.

And the christians in the quote didn't stop people from following female leadership in the church, but from following women's door-to-door-evangelism in the streets, as I see it. There's no mention of women leading a church here and church order is what 1. Timothy 2-3 is all about so those are two very different contexts.

Define prophecy?

To me, prophecy consists of occasional messages from God for other people, completely unrelated to the Bible or any deep theology. Sometimes, the message is only decipherable by the adressed person themselves.

In contrast to that, preaching consists of expository exegesis of the Bible in all the theological depth it contains in front of a group or audience.

And regarding my denomination: I'm part of a free evangelical church. I don't think we have any deep history with prophecy as that was never in our focus to begin with.

Wait, I thought you knew about Wingers series and his points. Did you actually watch some of it? Because he talks about how equating dominare with dominate falls into the etymological fallacy, how there are several sources with a positive/neutral use of the word in Greek sources (including the ones you used), how the cult of Artemis isn't relevant to this topic the way egalitarians commonly think it is, etc.

I'm not going to reiterate all the points and skip the Cult of Artemis alltogether as it's too long for this thread (several pages in bullet points in his notes alone), but if you're interested in his evaluation of the relevance of it with regards to women exercising authority, here are the free lesson notes.

Dominate means to overpower.

That's one of several possible translations. Others are more neutral (exercise sovereignity over, be in control). And since in Psalm 110,2 "overthrow in the midst of your enemies" doesn't really make sense in comparison to "rule/exercise sovereignity in the midst of your enemies", overpowering might be the wrong choice for a translation in 1. Timothy as well. Especially since, as already stated, oude only ever links two words with the same connotation (good or bad) with each other throughout the Bible, so unless teach has a negative connotation here as well, the context tells us that Paul intended a neutral/positive variant of dominare as well.

Timothy was a leader in the church of Ephesus.

If that was only a local issue, I don't think Paul would've referenced the order in creation in support of it. His appeal to it rather shows that it's a timeless construct that needs to be applied accordingly here as well as in all other churches.

This is why we need to be so careful about viewing scripture through our own lens as opposed to the lens they viewed it through.

I totally agree. And to me, this includes not automatically equating dominare with the most negative version of dominate that is in use today but rather to assess the many ways it was used back then and to check whether a positive connotation of that word is worth considering as well.

To me, the claim that it's objectively false would've piqued my interest as they either haven't encountered your rebuttal or they know about a critical weakness in it to not consider it any further. Either way, one of you would've learned something very relevant from this.

But now that you've started labeling, the gloves required for a constructive conversation are off, so depending on the experience of the counterpart with how conversations turn out once the labeling starts, they might've lost all interest in it as well.

I've often encountered people that I'd have loved to be way more brash towards as well but that would've hindered me from learning about their position, broadening my horizon and looking for the most effective way of countering it, so it would've been my loss in the end. Instead, I try to be as respectful as possible, while also not lacking any clarity about the gravity of the claims, especially when they're supposed to be objective.

But again, once the labeling starts, its the beginning of the end of a respectful and constructive conversation at eye level. And hardly ever before that, in my experience.

You wrote two short comments before labeling them as ignorant. In my experience, after two comments, you usually have only exchanged the most broad arguments for your respective position, it's yet to be determined whether the arguments are merely parroted and whether they have encountered your position already or whether your specific perspective is new to them.

I think, if you'd have given them the chance to elaborate on their refusal, as I'm sure they have one worth considering, you'd get to know the reasons behind it and where they assume weak points of your position, both very valuable by themselves, even if you decide to stop the conversation there.

But imo, by starting with labels after something I'd rather call practice shots than an actual duel or sniffing stage before the barking, you prematurely ended the conversation before something beneficial could arise.

Women have been given authority to teach men and to be leaders in scripture.

From the examples you gave in another thread, that statement is too broad. There have been female leaders in the OT (Deborah, although the priests at that time still were the spiritual authority and all male) and some cases of women teaching men privately (Priscilla) or spreading the gospel to all people (women at the grave), but the case of women teaching a group of men about theology publicly or leading them in general doesn't appear in the NT.

And regarding Deborah, besides being an exception (and the only case in the whole Bible you could really bring up with regards to the elder debate), regarding the way Barak hesitated going with her, I personally regard her as someone God had to use in an era of men unwilling to step up to their duty. I assume that if there was a man not only capable (like Barak), but also willing to take the lead, God would've appointed a man in her place as well.

But even without that, being the only case in the whole Bible for your position makes the argument questionable enough as is.

So your saying this verse doesn't apply because churches don't prophesy after some point.

No, I only said that the application of this verse isn't relevant to my specific local church as we don't practice sharing prophecies in services. I'm a continuist, so I wouldn't mind us practicing it, but I won't leave my church because of that alone.

Roman religious apologiest stating that Christians had women leaders

Do you have a specific example for that?

Tbh, I don't think God takes kindly to those that prematurely accuse others of ignorance and shun them accordingly either.

I didn't have the impression that this conversation was beyond saving at this point, it only became that way after your accusation.

The ministries you list are prophetesses, judges, proclaimers/evangelists and private teachers.

But just as in the OT priests were a whole different branch from judges, etc., so are elders and church preachers a different branch from what you mentioned. So so far, that conclusion isn't a necessary one.

As I see it, Paul doesn't primarily argue for head coverings due to the order of creation, he argues for head coverings as expressions of the order of creation.
Nowadays, those outward expressions are different, what matters is the order of creation getting its proper respect through our ways of expressing it.

In contrast to that, preaching isn't a cultural habit but something timeless. And since women preaching over a congregation of men rather expresses an inversion of the natural order, the ban of this practice is timeless, unlike the instruction regarding head coverings.