When asked by a friend whether having a woman pastor were Biblical, Seth Knorr realised he didn’t have an adequate answer. Inspired to reach a better understanding of women’s roles inside the church, Knorr set out to explore the original New Testament Greek. A Biblical Case for Women Pastors, Elders, and Deacons is the result.
After years of wrangling over the same controversial biblical passages, it can sometimes feel like the debate over women in ministry has run out of steam. Refreshingly, and perhaps thanks to Knorr’s own newness to the conversation, this book offers a much-needed injection of thought-provoking questions and exciting new avenues to explore. This starts with a surprising textual variant that turns a strongly debated passage right on its head.
Knorr’s finding hinges on a manuscript from the church father Origen which, crucially, adds the verb eimi to 1 Corinthians 14:35. Observing that two other works from Origen omitted this verb, and that this omission matches two highly respected Biblical manuscripts, Knorr concludes that eimi is not in the original although it was diligently copied by scribes many times over. He claims this is significant, because it means the most likely translation of 1 Corinthians 14:35 is, “it is shameful to speak to a woman in the congregation,” rather than “it is shameful for a woman to speak.”
While this is perhaps equally offensive to modern sensibilities, and while his findings do not currently appear to have been peer-reviewed, this is a novel (and bold) enough idea to make you want to know more.
After diving deep into his reasoning—exploring the technicalities of Greek grammar with help from the early church fathers and a detailed survey of Paul’s New Testament writings—he moves on to better-known conversations with the same attention to detail and desire to get to the truth:
- He argues vociferously against claims women should not teach because they, like Eve, are too easily deceived.
- He takes the complementarian argument that, if a debated passage had included women, feminine nouns would have been used, and runs with it to show the number of times a feminine noun is used, but translators still take the passage to refer to a male.
- He explores the significance of female prophets and reveals what he believes was meant by “elder” and ”fellow worker,” terms regularly underplayed by complementarian scholars to exclude women from any sense of authority or rank.
- He cites examples in contemporary literature to show that more women held positions of authority in first-century society than we have been led to believe.
Knorr’s style is bold and his reasoning confident. Clearly indignant at complementarian efforts to write women out of any position of leadership or authority, he doesn’t miss a single inconsistency, contradiction or sleight of hand. Some of his arguments are quite humorous, overriding the usual niceties to voice thoughts that, if we’re honest, have likely crossed most of our minds:
“If Adam was a leader and we are using Adam and Eve as a model of leadership, then no man should hold a leadership position since Adam was literally the worst leader ever.” (p. 35), or
“The irony is that if any egalitarian made such a dogmatic assertion based on circumstantial evidence, they would be blasted as unskilled theologians who should know better. Why the double standard?” (p. 100)
At times, however, his confidence is overstated. He regularly claims conclusive evidence and irrefutable proof, even when his logic is questionable, and it can be hard to follow his line of thought. His claim that the ”elect lady” in 2 John refers to a female church leader named “Electa,” rather than a specific church (chapter 18), is particularly difficult to untangle, with the result it feels somewhat far-fetched. Also, sadly, in his eagerness to highlight women leaders, he ends up embracing the complementarian picture of a church built on rank and hierarchy, rather than mutual submission and spiritual gifts. For example, based on Ephesians 4:11–12 and 1 Corinthians 12:28, Knorr assigns female prophets a “higher rank” than Timothy, whom he describes as a deacon and an evangelist (p.71). This is a clumsy interpretation; Paul is highlighting the importance of the gift of prophecy, not giving prophets a more elevated position within the hierarchy of the church.
Later chapters lack the detailed examination we find in Knorr’s earlier studies, as if some topics (Junia the apostle in chapter 16, for example, or the “elect lady”) were included only for a sense of completion. Knorr would have done better to leave these out and dedicate the space to a more detailed study of his novel findings. He could easily have drawn from the fascinating extra material in the appendices to enrich the main body of the book.
The question of readership is not easy to answer. Knorr’s stated aim is to create a text that is easy to understand for scholars and lay people alike, but his determination to cover all bases means he fails to fully serve either of the communities he is hoping to reach.
With so much time spent deep in the weeds of Greek grammar, non-Greek-speaking readers will struggle to assess the accuracy of his arguments. For this reason, A Biblical Case for Women Pastors, Elders, and Deacons sits more comfortably in the scholarly camp. However, although his scholarship is extensive and thorough, his sometimes-brash writing style undermines his scholarly aspirations. He makes simple errors (misunderstanding the term “primogeniture,” for example—p. 30), while his uncharitable accusations of male chauvinism (p. 114) and ”extreme bias” (pp. 27, 129) in his complementarian opponents don’t sit comfortably in an academic debate. Although it is tempting to be swept along with his outspoken confidence, it is unlikely that, as Knorr claims, his new findings have “thus ended the debate” (Introduction, p. ii). Far from it; A Biblical Case for Women Pastors, Elders, and Deacons is more likely to reinvigorate the conversation than set it to rest. This reader, for one, is keen to see how biblical scholars (on both sides) will choose to respond.
You May Also Be Interested In:
Book Review: Women in the Mission of the Church: Their Opportunities and Obstacles throughout Christian History
Book Review: Tell Her Story: How Women Led, Taught, and Ministered in the Early Church
Book Review: The Bible vs. Biblical Womanhood: How God’s Word Consistently Affirms Gender Equality
Book Review: Mary and Early Christian Women: Hidden Leadership
Book Review: On Purpose: Understanding God’s Freedom for Women Through Scripture
Book Review: Valiant or Virtuous? Gender Bias in Bible Translation
Book Review: The Ministry of Women in the New Testament: Reclaiming the Biblical Vision for Church Leadership
How God Sees Women: The End of Patriarchy