SOME ASPECTS OF FEMINIST THEOLOGY

(excerpted from God, Reason, and the Evangelicals, chapter 12)

(See the text itself for footnotes)

 

In her elaboration of the conditions under which the rich can enter the kingdom, Rosemary Reuther contends that we must avoid the idea that "God loves the rich and poor alike.... Such thinking does not entertain the possibility that God's redemptive love might be experienced differently by poor and rich, oppressed and oppressors, battered women and macho men."50 Reuther should have seen that her own Sophia Christology must eliminate this judgmental distinction, no matter how natural it comes to all of us. It was Yahweh, the patriarchal God, who declared that one son was more worthy than another. In contrast mother Sophia accepts all of her children on an equal and nonjudgmental basis.

 

Reuther has acknowledged that process theology anticipated feminist insights in many areas, and this particular aspect of Christology is the most important contribution of Christian dipolar theism.  John Cobb calls Whitehead's primordial nature God's "creative" love (Christ as Logos) while the consequent nature is called God's "redemptive" love (Christ as Redeemer).  According to Whitehead's doctrine of God, the consequent nature automatically takes all completed experience into itself, symbolizing in religious terms God's unconditional grace.  With the process God there is no judgment between rich and poor, macho man and feminist, Khomeni and Gandhi.  All created value and disvalue is taken into the divine nature for the creative transformation of the universe. 

 

        Although some feminist theologians like Mary Daly intensify the instinct to discriminate, Reuther and Elisabeth S. Fiorenza are models of self-restraint.  Instead of using the oppression of women as basis for a new ideology, these two realize that the major lesson from their heritage is that no one of any race, gender, social status or creed should be treated the way women have been.  (Especially commendable is their sensitivity to the anti-Judaism that lurks just below the surface of even the most scholarly reconstructions of Christian origins.)  As opposed to ideological feminists, Reuther and Fiorenza have no problems with a male Christ.  This concession is made of course on the condition that Jesus the man is taken as a representative of a universal humanity and not as a means of forcing patriarchal structures on women.  Although both of them refer to God as Mother (and Father, too), this does not mean that they have made any concessions to the "goddess" movement.  As Fiorenza explains: 

Although Jewish (and Christian) theology speaks about God in male language and images, it nevertheless insists that these are not adequate "pictures" of the divine, and that human language and experience are not capable of beholding or expressing God's reality....To fix God to a definite form and man-made image would mean idolatry....The prophets rejected the myth of the "divine couple," and thus repudiated masculinity and femininity as ultimate, absolute principles.52

Fiorenza believes that there is no harm in continuing to use Mother and/or Father for God as long as we keep her point always in mind.  The problem with this solution is that most people will continue to name God in their old unenlightened anthropocentric ways.  This is why I prefer to use strictly neuter God-talk.  Reuther agrees with Fiorenza's argument above and suggests that we use the term "God-ess" so that our attempt at inclusive language will not become too abstract (male).53

 

This judgment that abstract language and reasoning are exclusively masculine is common in many feminist circles.  The most radical expression of this sentiment is found among feminist literary critics who have been influenced by the deconstructionist theory of Jacques Derrida.  For Luce Irigaray all writing is "phallocratic" and "phallogocentric" and any attempt by a woman to write as a woman is "senseless, inappropriate, indecent."54  The result, explains Denis Donoghue, is that "women are condemned either to adopt the masculine discourse that leaves them essentially unexpressed, or to engage in a masquerade by which they mime the masculine syntax and take upon themselves, speciously of course, the signs of presence and power."55  As males both Donoghue and I believe that this is patent nonsense, but we can be comforted that at least one feminist thinker, Janet R. Richards, agrees.  She believes that it is both natural and necessary for women to use abstract reasoning and theorizing.  Richards believes that it is one of the principal tools by which women will finally win their proper place in the world.

 

There seems to be some exclusivism in Fiorenza's claim that the new society will not contain any fathers.  I am certain, however, that she means patriarchal, not biological fathers.  Feminist theologians are convinced that Jesus was thoroughly egalitarian and insisted that every form of male power and dominance would pass away with the coming of the kingdom.  Fiorenza takes issue with scholars like Gerd Theissen who describe early Christians as agapeists rather than egalitarians.  Fiorenza rejects this "love patriarchalism" and insists that Jesus' call for self-sacrificial love included both social and spiritual equality.  Repudiating centuries of tradition about the status of women in earliest Christianity, Fiorenza shows that Christian women, as opposed to their Jewish counterparts, were not only allowed to sit with men during Eucharistic fellowship but that they were also accepted as equals in missionary work.  In addition to Jesus' own views, Fiorenza believes that another important auxiliary catalyst was the presence of Greco-Roman women who drew on the egalitarian tradition of the mystery religions.

 

Feminist Bible scholars like Fiorenza do not dispute the fact that many biblical passages support patriarchal practices and institutions.  This challenge raises basic hermenueutical questions which we can view first from the perspective of the "contextualist" principle.  With regard to Paul's famous sexism, the apocryphal epistle of Phoebe (written by one of Fiorenza's graduate students) makes the point in a striking way.  Phoebe reports this response from Paul:  "If any of my letters do survive, only someone bewitched will fail to see the difference between my preaching of the Good News and my ramblings about cultural problems and situations.  People from another age will easily disregard the cultural trappings and get to the heart of the message."56  Phoebe is given a marvelous aside:  "If only that distinction were as clear to the rest of us as it is to Paul!"

 

Not only does the preceding passage confirm the truth of the contextualist principle, it is also a good reminder of a previous discussion about biblical authority.  There is no indication that Paul himself considered his own letters divinely inspired.  If this is correct then it also undermines the authority of the catholic epistles, which contain much of the sexism and hierarchical church structure.  It is interesting to note that many discourses on Christian politics begin with Paul and not with Jesus.  Fiorenza and others argue that Paul betrayed an early commitment to women's equality and reverted to rabbinic discrimination against them.

 

Reuther's "prophetic" principle, which uses equality and justice as basic hermeneutical axioms, constitutes a clean break with traditional views of biblical authority.  As Reuther states: "This rediscovery of prophetic content, and its discerning reapplication to new social situations, is precisely what the Bible calls "The Word of God."58  This dynamic scriptural principle looks forward to a liberated future rather than back to fossilized texts.  Although James Barr does not apply the point to social justice, he uses the "prophetic paradigm" as a way of countering the evangelical emphasis on historical, astronomical, and geographical accuracy.  Quite different was the prophets' judgment against those who had forgotten the plight of the poor and the oppressed.  Reuther's prophetic principle is a powerful hermeneutical device that enables Christians to distinguish between the Gospel and the Bible and criticize the latter in terms of the former. Reuther's principle allows us to criticize any religion that has become an ideology of power and domination.  At the same time it permits us to appropriate those elements of sacred scripture which nourish a theology of liberation.

 

It is an illuminating exercise to see how the feminist and conservative evangelical scriptural principles are applied in biblical interpretation.  Let us take as an example the parable of the workers in the vineyard (Matt. 20:1-6).  In the context of Harold Lindsell's political theology, the clear message of this parable is that employers have the exclusive right to determine the conditions of employment and to pay whatever wages they wish.59  The main problem with Lindsell's interpretation is that he overlooks the eschatological setting of the parables.  This is why it is always risky to apply the parables to existing social institutions, unless one is reflecting about their demise.  (There is something apocalyptic about Lindsell's power "trip": any capitalist who consistently runs a business like this farm boss would soon have to file for bankruptcy.) Fiorenza's reading is obviously nearer the truth:  "Jesus' parable thus startles his hearers into the recognition that God's gracious goodness establishes equality among all of us, righteous and sinner, rich and poor, men and women, Pharisees and Jesus' disciples.  It challenges the hearer to solidarity and equality with 'the last' in Israel."60  Feminists do not exaggerate in the least when they observe that there is one indisputable candidate for the last of the last, the oppressed of the oppressed:  the poor women of the world.

 

I believe that Fiorenza and Reuther are some of the best liberation theologians writing today; and I believe that Reuther's "Jesus and the Revolutionaries" (in To Change the World) is the best summary statement of this revolutionary development.  There are, however, weaknesses in their presentations.  Although I have limited expertise in New Testament studies, it seems to me that the so-called "Sophia" Christology is not well documented.  The feminist hermeneutic of "suspicion" has a plausible answer to challenges like this:  a patriarchal church would, as much as possible, eliminate gospel narratives which had strong feminist elements.  Indeed, the very fact that these passages survived proves that women played a very important role in the Jesus movement.  In contrast to Jesus' partiality to women in the Gospel accounts, which is so unmistakable that Fiorenza is led, perhaps incautiously, to propose the possibility of female authors for both Mark and John, the evidence for the Sophia Christology is not nearly as pervasive.  There is not enough evidence to support Fiorenza's claim that "Jesus probably understood himself as the prophet and child of Sophia."61  Nevertheless, the prominence of Wisdom motifs in the Q material (e.g., Lk. 7:35;11:49;13:34) and the early christological hymns (Col. 1:15-20; Philip. 2:6-11) firmly establishes a feminine Sophia as an important theme in early Christian self-understanding.  Quite apart from its biblical basis, sophialogy is to be praised for its doctrine of power sharing, its rejection of the idea of blood atonement, and the elimination of traditional concepts of judgment and afterlife.