On this episode of the CBMW Podcast, Jonathan Swan, Denny Burk, and Colin Smothers discuss the adoption of a new statement on LGBTQ by the board of the Evangelical Theological Society. You can watch the video below, or you can tune into Spotify or Apple podcast versions below that.
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What Happened at ETS 2025?
I attended the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society last week in Boston. Readers may wonder why I take time to write an annual round-up of the goings-on at such an event. The bottom line is pretty simple. This is where evangelical scholars and theologians gather to engage one another in academically rigorous theological debate. These are the authors who shape the pastors who in turn shape congregations across North America. What starts at ETS often doesn’t stay at ETS but eventually makes its way to the pews. For example, I had my first debate about whether same-sex attraction is sinful at the 2014 annual meeting of the ETS.…
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My Interview on Alisa Childers’ Podcast
Thank you to Alisa Childers for inviting me onto her podcast to discuss gender, sexuality, and complementarianism. It was a stimulating conversation, and I am grateful to have been a part of it. Alisa is doing great work and producing really helpful content. I encourage you to check out her books and subscribe to her podcast.
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Why Is John’s Gospel So Different from the Others?
One of the great ironies of the Gospel of John: The Greek version of this gospel is on the level of “See spot run.” It’s some of the easiest and most basic Greek that you will read anywhere. And yet, John fills these simple expressions with the most profound statements of Jesus’ identity and divine nature. It’s no wonder that the Nicene Creed is so indebted to the words of John’s Gospel. As I have been preaching through this book, I have told our congregation that the Gospel of John is like an ocean. There are parts of it that are shallow enough for a toddler to splash around in…
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Should Women Serve as “Shepherds”? – CBMW Podcast
As I mentioned earlier this week, some churches are appointing female “shepherds” in an effort to get around the biblical prohibition on female “pastors.” On this episode of The CBMW Podcast, we discuss what the Bible says about gender, the office of pastor, and why it matters. [Watch below on YouTube, or listen below on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.]
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Why I Do Not Favor the Moniker “Biblical Patriarchy”
Complementarian doctrine doesn’t require adherents to adopt a certain label for their view. It’s far more important for people to accept and affirm the Bible’s teaching on manhood and womanhood than for them to embrace any specific moniker for it. Having said that, there is great value in being precise and clear when thinking about and communicating Christian doctrine. For that reason, I still prefer and recommend the use of the term “complementarianism” to label our position over “biblical patriarchy.” I have made a positive case for “complementarianism” elsewhere. In this essay, I want to respond to some of the critiques in Doug Ponder’s thoughtful essay weighing the relative merits…
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The Innermost Meaning of the Cross is Penal Substitution
“Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, And by His scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way; But the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him… But the LORD was pleased To crush Him, putting Him to grief; If He would render Himself as a guilt offering, He will see His offspring, He will…
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How Should Preachers Deal with the Story of the Woman Caught in the Act of Adultery?
I have been preaching through the Gospel of John at my church, and on Sunday I reached John 7:53-8:11–the story of the woman caught in the act of adultery. Without question, this is one of the most beloved passages in all of Scripture, but it is also one of the most poorly attested in the Greek New Testament. No version of the story appears in any copy of John’s Gospel until the 5th century–about 400 years after the Gospel was written. Also the language and style of the Greek stands apart from the rest of the Gospel. Linguistically, it’s like a whole different world than the rest of John’s account.…
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Is Marriage a “Submission Competition”?
Andy Stanley posted on X about what the New Testament requires of husbands and wives. He writes: New Testament Marriage is a submission competition. “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” (Eph 5:21) “Walk in the way of love, JUST AS Christ loved us and gave himself up for us…” (Eph. 5:2) The only problem with this argument is that neither this text nor any other in the New Testament tells husbands to submit to their wives. Thus, egalitarians are mistaken to interpret “one another” to require mutual submission. The Greek term for “one another” does not always denote strict reciprocity. Sometimes it does, and sometimes it doesn’t.…
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Did Aristotle Really Say that Women Are Deformed?
Aristotle has regularly been pilloried by modern writers (and especially feminists) for saying that “The female is as it were a deformed male.”1 New feminist Prudence Allen, for example, argues that this statement from Aristotle among many others renders him morally retrograde in his views on women.2 It may be the case that he is guilty as charged. I do not intend to adjudicate that point. I do wonder, however, if his statement about women being “deformed” has been rightly understood on its own terms. The Greek term translated as “deformed” is peperomenon, and it literally means maimed or mutilated. Figuratively, it denotes something like incapacitated.3 But Aristotle’s usage of…
