Apostles and prophets

Addendum: John Hobbins has linked to this post. He then said something about me. He then said that if I rebutted his post, he would link to my rebuttal. I responded to his post but he now says that this is not a rebuttal so he won't link to it.

Mike Heiser has not attempted to argue that Junia was a man, or that she was not among the apostles. However, he sets up a dichotomy between an apostle, basically an itinerant missionary; and local church leadership. According to Mike, it is the local church leadership which has authority. Women can be apostles in the sense of being itinerant missionaries, but they cannot hold authority in the local church. Mike writes,

the ... definition of apostle would technically exclude a “stationary” (“normative” for today) pastorate — and create or allow for the sort of category, notorious among some egalitarians, of “woman missionary who isn’t actually a pastor.” But maybe that’s actually closer to the NT model than “non-missionary woman church pastor/leader staying put in a local church.” I’m fine with the former since it seems suspiciously like what the NT is describing for Junia. I’m not convinced the latter is consistent with that. I’d have no trouble getting over that hump if the NT didn’t seem to *distinguish* apostles from local church leaders.

So Mike argues that women can preach as long as they don't remain stationary. Women cannot remain in an established church. Women can travel overseas, and they can preach to the unchurched, and they can teach and translate the Bible. But once a congregation is established, a house is purchased,and a salary is in view, women have no right to any of this.

Right across the street from me here in Vancouver, lives a woman just my age, with the same job as me, and a husband and three children. She is conservative, generous, modest and ethical. She will never experience going to church. Her father, a farmer in the north of British Columbia, vowed many years ago, never to return to church after the woman missionary who established the church he attended, was replaced with a salaried male. He wanted none of it.

I am ashamed that in many churches today no progress has been made. There is no biblical justification for saying that a woman minister may not settle down. There is nothing which says that an apostle (other than the twelve) is without authority, and without the right to stay in one place.

If one holds the Bible as a standard and guide, there is no reason to say that a woman can have a gift as long as she is not paid for it, as long as she does not stay in one place. There is no passage which divides the gifts, on the one hand, into non-authoritative apostles, and prophets; and on the other hand, into authoritative pastors and teachers. On the contrary, Eph. 4:11 says,

So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers,