Introduction: Feminist Approaches to Scripture
There are three general groups of feminists that interact with the Bible in one way or another: (1) radical feminists; (2) reformist feminists; and (3) biblical or evangelical feminists/egalitarians. Radical feminists reject Scripture and Christianity as a whole, owing to what they perceive to be the Bible’s irredeemably patriarchal nature. Their approach is such that they acknowledge what Scripture teaches but proceed to create a theology in conscious opposition to it. Some of these feminists call themselves “post-Christian.”
The same is true to a lesser extent with reformist feminists, except that they do not reject Scripture in its totality but selectively use or discard what does or does not conform to their feminist presuppositions. A reformist feminist typically starts out with the “enlightened notion” that all men— and women—are equal in value and role and then critique and supplement Scripture as they see fit. The authority of Scripture is rejected where it does not conform to their feminist outlook. Additional writings that reflect more closely their own beliefs are included in their canon as well. Some of these reformist feminists are very radical in the views that they espouse. Also, it is not uncommon for feminists to move from a more conservative to a more radical stance over time.
Evangelical or biblical feminism, a movement also called “egalitarianism” due to its emphasis on the full equality of men and women, professes commitment to scriptural inspiration and authority. This movement represents an effort within evangelicalism to revisit the traditional interpretation of gender passages in the Bible, including Jesus’ perspective on women, in order to align it with a notion of gender equality. Within an inerrantist framework, egalitarians consider themselves to be both evangelical/biblical and feminist. While radical and reformist feminists rally around the notion of liberation from oppression, evangelical feminists adopt equality as their central tenet.
The teaching of Gal 3:28 that in Christ “there is neither male nor female” serves as the key biblical text by which all other teachings of Scripture on gender issues are measured. Egalitarians have a higher view of Scripture than radical or reformist feminists. Unlike the latter, who already start out with the presupposition that feminism is right and the Bible wrong where it stands in conflict with feminism (in effect practicing a deductive method), evangelical feminists claim to show inductively that the Bible, rightly interpreted, teaches male-female equality, including women’s eligibility to all church offices and roles of leadership in the church.
In this article, I will present case studies of radical and reformist feminists and in conclusion explore implications for egalitarianism. The radical feminist case study considers Daphne Hampson, and the reformist feminist case study considers Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza.
Radical Feminism Case Study: Daphne Hampson
Biography
Daphne Hampson is a prominent radical feminist in Britain. Hampson started her career as a historian in Oxford, England. She completed a Harvard doctorate in systematic theology and in 1977 assumed a post as Lecturer in systematic theology at the University of Saint Andrews, Scotland. Hampson took a leading part in the campaign to allow women to be ordained to the priesthood in the Anglican Church. She now considers herself a “post-Christian feminist” (see, for example, her work After Christianity, published in 1996) and holds that Christianity and feminism are incompatible and that Christianity is a mere myth.2 Convinced that feminism represents the death-knell of Christianity as a viable religious option,3 Hampson is seeking for new ways to conceptualize God that are in continuity with the Western tradition.
In Search for Alternate Paradigms
In her search for alternate paradigms, Hampson critiques the work of other, less radical, reformist feminists, and she writes that the problem with their approaches is that they still seek to place themselves within “the trajectory of biblical religion.”4 Once one accepts some form of Scripture’s authority, Hampson contends, one assumes that Christianity is in some sense true. If a basically critical stance toward Scripture is adopted, such an assumption of scriptural authority is no longer warranted. As a result, Hampson adopts what she calls a “post-Christian position.”5
In her search for suitable paradigms, Hampson posits the “paradigm of mutual empowerment” as a basis for constructing her religion.6 “Can this paradigm be found in the Judeo-Christian tradition?” Hampson asks. At the very outset, she rejects the Trinity as a possible candidate, since it contains an element of hierarchy and dependence, with the Son submitting to and depending on the Father. Jesus’ life, too, according to Hampson, did not model a paradigm of mutual empowerment. Jesus was not a feminist, and there is “no evidence that the equality of women was even an issue in the society in which he lived.”7 Jesus did not challenge the secondary role women played in Jewish religion, and he accepted the prevailing male and female roles in his society. He also referred to God as his Father.
To be sure, perhaps against the mores of his day, he permitted a woman to sit and learn at his feet, but we “have no picture of Jesus sitting at a woman’s feet, learning from her.”8 Jesus (and Paul) may have been personally kind to women, even ahead of their time, but this does not make them feminists. For this reason God, as traditionally conceived, and Jesus, seen as God or as symbolic of God, are unusable as sources for the feminist paradigm of mutual empowerment.
Feminism vs. Christianity
According to Hampson, women “have no use for a God who condescends to be with them in their weakness. Paternalism fits ill with feminism.”9 She claims that women want to be whole, self-directed, free, and interdependent with others. They want a God who does not override their will and who is non-dominative.10 Hampson calls for “a model of the self as being related in its very being to God,” whereby God does not stand over against women as one “who could potentially dominate us, or who could suggest an action which to carry out would be for us to act heteronomously.”11 She expresses the need for a utopian world in which power is not exercised, in which the few do not coerce the many, or one sex does not dominate the other—a world in which service and self-giving which are unproductive for the one who serves and gives is reduced to a minimum.12 Feminism, she says, is the “last great hope” for our world.
Hampson presents a stirring vision but one that, as Hampson herself states, is at variance with the biblical message regarding the nature of God, Jesus, and many other facets of scriptural teaching. In fact, the only reason Hampson still refers to Christianity is to position her vision of feminism against it. In essence, feminism is whatever Christianity is not.
Feminism is self-actualizing rather than selfgiving. It is assertive of its independence and autonomy rather than service-oriented, since service gives up self while feminism is all about reclaiming power over self. Feminism is strong rather than weak and self-sufficient rather than dependent.
Remarkably, this radical egalitarianism extends even to God, the Creator. In order for Hampson’s vision of feminism to be realized, God must be one of us. He must be like us, for any form of power is excluded.13 There is also no need for the cross, for Hampson denies any need for women to come to God in dependence, weakness, or need. Everything that the cross of Jesus Christ represents—service, self-sacrifice, loving self-denial—is excluded from Hampson’s feminist vision.
Christianity as Myth
Further insight into Hampson’s thought is provided by an interview in which Hampson says that she is not a Christian because she believes Christianity is a mere myth, and she cannot “conform to the kind of view of ‘woman’ that there is within this myth.”14 According to Hampson, feminism has brought about a revolution in the way in which women are conceived, and there must be no return to a society in which women are assigned a place to which they must conform.15
After working for the ordination of women in the Anglican Church, Hampson took a feminist “leap into maturity” in the conviction that one can be a religious and spiritual person without believing in Christian doctrine.16 In her interview, Hampson says that in her late teens she discovered that some people think Jesus is God. She was “amazed and horrified,” because she found this completely unbelievable.17 At the same time, she was told that Jesus had died for her sins. She could not accept this either. At the most, Jesus “was a very fine human being who loved God”—no more.18 As for the Bible, Hampson regards it as “just part of human literature in which people had recorded their experience and awareness of God.” There is no way in which she would consider the Bible inspired in a way that other literature is not.19
Hampson believes that “we need to be deeply in tune with who we most truly are.”20 We must come home to ourselves so as to find ourselves and realize who we are meant to be. Hampson defines the problem with Christianity as its being a religion of revelation with a transcendent God who is other than humankind, and, by definition, it holds that there has been a revelation in a past period of human history.21 This kind of heteronomy (subjection to the rule of another) is impossible for Hampson: “I have got to see myself, in my relation to others, as at the centre of my world … a law unto myself … and not be a slave to anything which is outside myself.”22
Hampson’s Rejection of Christianity
“Christianity is a Father-Son religion [and as such] has no place for independent, adult women who are self-directing people.”23 Why would a woman want to see herself as “in Christ”? “Why should she relate to God through someone else?”24 For her, therefore, Christianity is most profoundly at odds with the central tenets of feminism, and being a “Christian feminist” is an improper conception of one’s identity. Hampson’s view of God, Jesus, and the Bible places her outside the church and outside Christianity. Outside the Christian faith is a place she desires for herself, and she sees it as the only place any truly radical feminist woman can legitimately occupy.
Evaluation
Like other radical feminists, Hampson’s hermeneutic is based on a rejection of Scripture as inextricably patriarchal and of Christianity as untrue. From this rejection follows Hampson’s quest for alternate approaches to theology that are suitable for feminists seeking to reshape a world more in keeping with their ideals.
In contrast to most reformist feminists and virtually all evangelical feminists, Hampson acknowledges that Jesus was not a feminist. Rather than engage in a revisionist reading of the biblical evidence, she is able to discern that the biblical portrayal of Jesus, while showing him as reaching out to women, does not have him challenge the prevailing male and female roles in society at the time of Jesus. In this she is to be commended for her intellectual clarity.
Hampson indicates that she has no placefor Jesus Christ in her theological system. First, she does not believe that he was divine. Second, in upholding the ideal of people coming to terms with their true inner selves she denies that humans are sinful and thus in need of salvation. Third, she questions why anyone would want to be “in Christ” and thus relate to God through someone else. Fourth, this removes the notion of the church as the company of those “in Christ,” as Hampson propagates herself “a law unto herself.” This shows that ultimately biblical Christianity and feminism cannot co-exist. In stark opposition to reformist and evangelical feminist approaches to Scripture, Hampson accurately discerns that being a “Christian feminist” is a contradiction in terms.
Yet every one of Hampson’s beliefs regarding Jesus is itself open to question. Many have pointed to Jesus’ performance of numerous miracles; the fulfillment of countless scriptural prophecies in Jesus’ life and ministry; the fact that the rapid rise of early Christianity is best explained by the fact that Jesus actually rose from the dead; and the presence of a plethora of eyewitnesses who could have countered the apostles’ account of events surrounding Jesus in their early preaching. None of this removes the need for faith in the biblical testimony, but Christians do have a proper basis for belief in the scriptural record, and radical feminists such as Hampson ignore Jesus to their eternal peril.
While someone who adheres to historic biblical Christianity will obviously not agree with Hampson’s feminist vision and her view of Christianity as myth, she is to be commended for the consistency with which she holds and develops her approach and for her clear understanding of Christian doctrine and tenets. If Christianity were indeed a myth, there is no reason why anyone should embrace the view of women within that myth. Despite this, Hampson continues to engage Christianity in her work.
Hampson’s exceptional clarity of thought also appropriately discerns that Christianity and Scripture do contain a clear emphasis on male authority. Her condemnation of any approaches that seek to diminish the androcentric bias of Scripture by uncovering feminine images for God or female role models in Scripture is also consistent from within her frame of reference. Her writings also helpfully expose the weakness of other positions, such as evangelical feminism and aspects of reformist feminism, that strenuously work to find the feminist viewpoint validated in Scripture.
Reformist Feminism Case Study: Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza
Introduction
Who do reformist feminists say that Jesus is? The major difference between radical and reformist feminist scholars is that the former reject the Bible and the Judeo-Christian tradition wholesale, whereas the latter opt to stay within the Christian tradition and seek to reform it from within. Such reformist efforts include the use of gender-inclusive language, the reinterpretation of biblical texts, and historical criticism. Reformist feminists do not consider Scripture to be inerrant or authoritative, though they do use it in their theological formulation and reflection.
Biography
Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza can rightly be considered the matriarch of North American feminism. She was born in Romania in 1938 and fled with her family to what would become West Germany during World War II. Fiorenza, who identifies herself as a Roman Catholic, earned her master of divinity degree from the University of Würzburg and her doctorate from the University of Münster, both in Germany. Her thesis was published in 1964 as her first book, titled The Forgotten Partner: Foundations, Facts and Possibilities of the Professional Ministry of Women in the Church. Originally her doctoral thesis bore the title “Priest for God: A Study of the Motif of the Kingdom and Priesthood in the Apocalypse.”
Fiorenza has served for many years as the Krister Stendahl Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School. Before assuming her position at Harvard, she taught as professor of New Testament Studies at the University of Notre Dame and the Episcopal Divinity School. Fiorenza was the first woman elected to the post of president of the Society of Biblical Literature and has served on the editorial boards of many biblical journals and societies. Fiorenza is the cofounder (with Judith Plaskow) and editor of the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion and a coeditor of Concilium, an international theological review in the Roman Catholic tradition. She has served with the Women’s Ordination Conference, Sisters against Sexism, Feminist Theological Institute, Women Scholars in Religion, Women in Theology, and Women Moving Church.
In Memory of Her
While there were precursors in the 1970s, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza’s historical reconstruction of early Christian origins, particularly as it relates to Jesus’ and the early church’s treatment of women, has been by far the most influential in the past several decades. In her major work In Memory of Her (1983), Fiorenza proposes a fourfold hermeneutic:
(1) a hermeneutic of suspicion toward traditional interpretations of biblical texts owing to patriarchal bias and assumptions;
(2) a hermeneutic of remembrance that uncovers women’s agency in foundational Christian tradition;
(3) a hermeneutic of proclamation that relates this reconstruction to the Christian community; and
(4) a hermeneutic of imagination that expresses feminism in ritual, prayer, hymns, banners, and art.25
In the book Fiorenza uses a form of the historical-critical method to reconstruct early Christian origins, particularly with regard to Jesus’ treatment of women and the status of women in the early church. In Fiorenza’s own words, her primary objective in In Memory of Her is “to reconstruct early Christian history as women’s history in order not only to restore women’s stories to early Christian history but also to reclaim this history as the history of women and men.”26 Applying historical and sociological criticism to the Gospels, Fiorenza contends that the Gospels show Jesus standing in judgment over the kind of marginalization of women practiced today. Thus, female subordination is not part of the original gospel but a result of Christianity’s accommodation to Greco-Roman culture.
Taking her cue from Elizabeth Cady Stanton and The Woman’s Bible (1895, 1898), Fiorenza affirms that biblical interpretation is a political act, and she espouses a liberation theology model of biblical interpretation.27 For Fiorenza, “a feminist reconstitution of the world requires a feminist hermeneutic that shares in the critical methods and impulses of historical scholarship on the one hand and in the theological goals of liberation theologies on the other hand.”28
Fiorenza’s concludes, “The revelatory canon for theological evaluation of biblical androcentric traditions and their subsequent interpretations cannot be derived from the Bible itself but can only be formulated in and through women’s struggle for liberation from all patriarchal oppression.”29 In other words, “only those traditions and texts that critically break through patriarchal culture … have the theological authority of revelation.”30 Significantly, Fiorenza finds “such revelation … in the life and ministry of Jesus as well as in the discipleship community of equals called forth by him.”31
Further on in her work In Memory of Her, Fiorenza attempts to reconstruct women’s history as “the history of the discipleship of equals.” Fiorenza understands the “Jesus movement” as a renewal movement within Judaism that presented an alternative to the dominant patriarchal restrictions in that culture.32 According to Fiorenza, Jesus’ vision of the kingdom includes the praxis of inclusive wholeness.33 Jesus’ healings, his table fellowship with sinners, and his accepting attitude toward all are cited as proofs of this new approach on his part.
After quoting Luke 7:35, “wisdom is justified by all her children,” Fiorenza makes the claim that divine Sophia served as Israel’s God and that “the Palestinian Jesus movement understood the mission of Jesus as that of the prophet and child of Sophia.”34 Sophia, the female deity, was also the driving force behind Jesus’ pursuit of a “discipleship of equals.” She concludes,
As a feminist vision, the basileia [kingdom] vision of Jesus calls all women without exception to wholeness and selfhood, as well as to solidarity with those women who are the impoverished, the maimed, and outcasts of our society and church. It knows of the deadly violence such a vision and commitment will encounter. It enables us not to despair or to relinquish the struggle in the face of such violence. It empowers us to walk upright, freed from the double oppression of societal and religious sexism and prejudice. The woman-identified man, Jesus, called forth a discipleship of equals that still needs to be discovered and realized by women and men today.35
Critiques of Fiorenza
Fiorenza’s reconstruction of early Christianity has held virtually paradigmatic status among feminist biblical scholarship for the better part of two decades. In recent years, however, increasingly voices made themselves heard, even in feminist circles, that began to question the historical merits of Fiorenza’s proposal. Representative critics include Kathleen Corley and John H. Elliott. What is particularly significant is that these critiques are coming from within the feminist movement rather than merely from non-feminists. It is not only non-egalitarians who are questioning the notion that Jesus was an egalitarian but feminists themselves who are committed to responsible historical research have come to the realization that the view of a “feminist Jesus” is historically untenable.
Kathleen Corley
Kathleen Corley, who holds a master of arts and a doctor of philosophy in religion from Claremont Graduate School, mounts a major challenge to Fiorenza’s paradigm of Jesus as a first-century Jewish feminist in her book Women and the Historical Jesus (2002). Corley, who serves as Oshkosh Northwestern Distinguished Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, where she has taught since 1992, forcefully contends that Fiorenza unduly imposes her feminism onto the biblical and historical record, and other feminists agree.
Thus at the very outset of her book Women and the Historical Jesus: Feminist Myths of Christian Origins (2002), Corley, in a reference to Fiorenza’s landmark work In Memory of Her, calls the notion that Jesus established a discipleship of equals a “feminist myth of Christian origins.”36 Summarizing her own conclusions, Corley writes,
While this study affirms the role of women in Jesus’ own community and in subsequent Jesus movements, it challenges both the assumption that Jesus himself fought ancient patriarchal limitations on women and the hypothesis that the presence of women among his disciples was unique within Hellenistic Judaism. Rather, an analysis of Jesus’ teaching suggests that while Jesus censured the class and status distinctions of his culture, that critique did not extend to unequal gender distinctions. The notion that Jesus established an anti-patriarchal movement or a “discipleship of equals” is a myth posited to buttress modern Christian social engineering.37
It is significant that Corley—a member of a scholarly group of critical scholars called the Jesus Seminar—reaches her conclusions on the basis of historical research, the very method that led Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza to the diametrically opposite conclusion that Jesus was, in fact, pursuing an egalitarian agenda. According to Corley, while Jesus was concerned for Jewish monotheism and expressed an interest in class and rank, “he did not address the concern most central to modern women—inequality between the sexes.”38 Rather, as Corley notes, Jesus reaffirmed marriage, “the major hierarchical social relationship between a man and a woman that was considered the bedrock of the state in antiquity” (Mark 10:1-12 pars.).39
Corley observes that the reigning consensus among the members of the Jesus Seminar, many of whom were influenced by the scholarship of Schüssler Fiorenza, affirms that “Jesus preached a kind of social egalitarianism that pitted him against the social and religious hierarchies of his day.”40 Corley cites a litany of scholars who refer to Jesus as a feminist, labeling his acceptance of women as revolutionary, radical, unique, reformational, or unprecedented in the ancient world, including Palestine.41
However, while the vision of an egalitarian “society of Jesus” that eventually gave way to a patriarchal backlash by the second- and third-century institutional church may provide an ideal rallying point as a “foundational myth for Christian feminism,” Corley argues that this reconstruction is historically untenable and unsupported by the available sources, including the Gospels.
In the conclusion to Women and the Historical Jesus, Corley helpfully summarizes her major findings. First, she writes, “The group around Jesus cannot be characterized as a ‘discipleship of equals,’ since probably only a few women were members of the predominantly male group; … the limited participation of women does not suggest a group focused on equality or equal representation.”42 Second, Jesus’ concern was more broadly for the poor and the marginalized in society than for women’s rights specifically: “The women seem to be around Jesus more as a matter of course than as a result of a gender-equal vision of the Kingdom of God.” Any such concerns came to the fore only subsequent to Jesus’ ministry.43 Third, women around Jesus continued to be involved in traditionally female roles such as mourning the dead and participating in funerary rites and gravesite rituals.44
Overall, Corley finds a certain amount of common ground with Fiorenza while remaining largely critical of her overall paradigm. In her work Jesus and the Politics of Interpretation, Fiorenza has responded to an earlier essay by Corley. However, Fiorenza did not advance any significant new evidence in support of her historical reconstruction of Jesus’ stance toward women in In Memory of Her. For this reason Corley’s main critique continues to be valid, and other voices have added further critiques that undermine the validity of Fiorenza’s paradigm of the “egalitarian Jesus.”
John H. Elliott
John Elliott is another who critiques the notion that Jesus instituted an egalitarian community. Elliott, professor emeritus of theology and religious studies at the University of San Francisco, contends that Fiorenza’s theory is implausible both socially and politically in light of the available textual and historical evidence. According to Elliott, the notion of the egalitarian Jesus does not square with the actual historical and social nature of the nascent Jesus movement and represents an instance of the “idealist fallacy,” that is, the improper practice of confusing one’s own preferred ideology with actual reality. Elliott summarizes his concerns as follows.
(1) Those who find egalitarianism in the New Testament interpret texts anachronistically by imposing a post-Enlightenment concept onto the first-century world. The concept of equality is of modern origin and alien to the thought world and social reality of the ancient world:
The notion that all persons are created equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights is a construct of the modern Enlightenment and thoroughly alien to the thinking of the ancient world. There the prevailing notion was rather that humans were by nature born unequal and this unalterable inequality was evident physically, socially, and ethnically.45
(2) “Equality” terminology (iso-) is never used in the New Testament to convey the notion of gender or other equality but rather that of equity or sameness.46
(3) The biblical texts cited in support of Jesus’ establishment of an egalitarian society are better interpreted on the presumption of inequality of social status. Jesus’ teaching regarding the reversal of status presumes the existence of status in the first place (e.g., Mark 9:35-37 par.; see Mark 10:13-15 par.). This includes differences in status between disciple and teacher (Luke 6:40; Matt 10:24-25; John 13:16; 15:20); parents and children (Mark 7:11-13; 10:19 pars.); and husbands and wives (Matt 5:31-32; 19:9).
(4) No concrete historical or social evidence exists that Jesus instituted a community of equals. There is no evidence in the writings of Josephus, Pliny, Tacitus, Suetonius, or any other extrabiblical author.
(5) The primary New Testament text cited in support of egalitarianism, Gal 3:28, pertains to the unity of believers in Christ, not their equality, affirming inclusivity with regard to ethnic, social, and gender boundaries rather than leveling all status distinctions.
(6) The equation between patriarchy and dominance customarily made by feminists does not hold.
(7) The egalitarian hypothesis is not borne out by the available historical evidence but rather constitutes an instance of the “idealist fallacy.”
(8) Insufficient thought is given to the practical implementation of an egalitarian vision into concrete social reality. From a sociological point of view, Jesus’ establishment of an egalitarian community would have required dramatic changes in the social structures of his day.
(9) The thesis has been rejected by feminist scholars such as Mary Rose D’Angelo, Amy-Jill Levine, and Kathleen Corley owing to its lack of historical support.
(10) The notion of Jesus’ establishment of a community of equals fails to account for Jesus’ reaffirmation of the family as the primary social structure and as instituted by God.
Elliott concludes the first part of his study:
By imputing to the biblical authors a modern concept of equality that is not found in the Bible and the ancient world and by allowing this imputed concept to determine their interpretation of the New Testament, they have produced an interpretation that distorts and obscures the actual content and thrust of these texts. Such an interpretative procedure appears [to be] more eisegesis than exegesis and deserves to [be] rejected as a[n] unhappy example [of] interpretive method. An anachronistic imputation of modern notions to the biblical authors should be challenged and resisted in the name of historical honesty wherever and however it occurs. To be sure, let us expend every ounce of energy it takes to reform the ills of society and church. But let us do so with historical honesty, respecting the past as past and not trying to recreate it with modern constructs or re-write it with new ideological pens.47
In a sequel, Elliott investigates Fiorenza’s theory with regard to circumstances subsequent to Jesus’ death. According to Elliott, “The egalitarian theory fares no better in clarifying the structure of the Jesus movement after Jesus’ death than it does in explaining the nature of the community established by Jesus.”48 Not only is the concept of equality or egalitarianism historically incompatible with first-century conditions, but there is no evidence of egalitarianism in the New Testament or any other ancient source. Elliott concludes,
On a personal note, I must confess that I have not enjoyed mounting this critique. With every fibre of my egalitarian being I wish it were demonstrable that the Jesus movement had been egalitarian, at least at some point in its early history. This surely would make it easier for today’s advocates of equality, among whom I count myself, to appeal to our past as a source of inspiration and moral guidance for the present. But, as the historical and ideological critic in all of us insists, wishing and politically correct ideology cannot not [sic] make it so. Ultimately, this well-intentioned theory is an unhappy example of anachronism and idealist thinking that must be challenged not just because it is indemonstrable or an example of flawed interpretation but also because it is so seductive. The notion that the Jesus movement ever formed a “community of equals” founded by Jesus is a phantasm, a fata morgana, a wish still awaiting incarnation. If the church were ever to put an egalitarian vision into practice, it would be a first-time event and an accomplishment that eluded even Jesus and his first followers.49
Conclusion
In light of these concerns registered by feminists on historical and other grounds, Fiorenza’s historical reconstruction of the Jesus movement and of early Christianity would seem to require significant revision. Over the past few decades, Fiorenza’s model has served as a powerful “myth of Christian origins” for the feminist movement. However, the above points of critique call for developing an alternative broad understanding of Jesus’ approach to women and of the early church’s practice concerning women, particularly with regard to their participation in roles of leadership.
Conclusion
In this article, I have given a representative overview of radical and reformist feminist approaches to Jesus’ view of women by way of selected case studies. We have seen that radical feminists, such as Daphne Hampson, typically regard Jesus as unacceptably patriarchal. They view Christianity as a whole as a Father-Son religion that cannot be reconciled with feminism, and, as a result, have little or no use for the Bible in formulating and implementing their feminist vision.
Reformist feminists, too, critique Scripture for what they perceive as its “patriarchal bias,” but many, such as Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, hold that Jesus’ approach to women can serve as a usable paradigm for feminists. As we have seen, however, many feminists now are critical of Fiorenza’s contention that Jesus established an egalitarian “discipleship of equals.” I conclude with a few observations concerning the relevance of this study.
(1) Radical and reformist feminists generally do not agree on who Jesus was. Was he patriarchal, as radical feminists contend, or was he a feminist, as reformists such as Fiorenza believe? Both cannot be right. This means that while radical and reformist feminists share a feminist vision, they do not agree on who Jesus is.
(2) As we have seen, even among reformist feminists Fiorenza’s paradigm has begun to crumble. Reformist feminists no longer rally behind the notion that Jesus was a feminist, and the erosion of Fiorenza’s paradigm has led to confusion in reformist circles. If anything, there is an emerging consensus that the historical evidence does not bear out the notion that Jesus was a feminist, even though he was more open to women than other Jewish rabbis of his day. Feminists today who want to implement their vision cannot legitimately ground their paradigm in Jesus.
(3) Many of the critiques lodged by feminists against Fiorenza’s paradigm also pertain to the egalitarian view of Jesus. Egalitarians say that Jesus was an egalitarian or feminist. As inerrantists, they are committed to the notion that whatever the Bible says regarding Jesus, this the church today ought to practice. However, fewer and fewer reformist feminists embrace the idea of an egalitarian Jesus on the basis of the available historical evidence and other factors.
Yet while reformists are free to dispose of the notion of an egalitarian Jesus because they are not committed to biblical inerrancy, egalitarians are not at liberty to dismiss the tenet that Jesus’ practice and teaching were egalitarian. Thus egalitarians are found to continue upholding a paradigm—the egalitarian Jesus—that is increasingly and legitimately being discredited and discarded even by other feminists.
Endnotes
1 This article includes some representative case studies from my new book Jesus and the Feminists: Who Do They Say That He Is? (Wheaton: Crossway, 2008). It is printed here with permission.
This is not a summary of the entire book, and the case studies also are not a substitute for reading the book where I discuss and critique many other feminist authors with regard to their view of Jesus’ approach to women.
2 “BISFT Interview with Dr. Daphne Hampson,” Feminist Theology 17 (1998): 39.
3 Daphne Hampson, Theology and Feminism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), 1.
4 “Interview,” 35, 37.
5 Ibid., 41; Daphne Hampson, After Christianity (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1996).
6 Daphne Hampson, “On Power and Gender,” Modern Theology 4, no. 3 (1988): 234-50.
7 Ibid., 247.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid., 248.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid., 248-49.
13 Ibid.
14 “Interview,” 39.
15 Ibid., 43.
16 Ibid., 50.
17 Ibid., 49.
18 Ibid.
19 Ibid., 50.
20 For the role of religious consciousness in the work of Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834) see William Baird, History of New Testament Research, Volume One: From Deism to Tübingen (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 208-20.
21 “Interview,” 51.
22 Ibid.
23 Ibid., 54.
24 Ibid., 55.
25 Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, “Emerging Issues in Feminist Biblical Interpretation,” in Christian Feminism: Visions of a New Humanity (ed. J. L. Weidman; San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1984), 47-84; see idem, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad/Herder & Herder, 1994), xxiii, 26-36; V. C. Phillips, “Feminist Interpretation,” in Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation (ed. J. H. Hayes. Nashville: Abingdon, 1999), 393-94; Mary A. Kassian, The Feminist Mistake: The Radical Impact of Feminism on Church and Culture (Wheaton: Crossway, 2005), 131-38. For an application of Fiorenza’s hermeneutic to a specific text of Scripture, Luke 10:38-42, see Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, “A Feminist Critical Interpretation for Liberation: Martha and Mary: Lk. 10:39-42,” Religion & Intellectual Life 3, no. 2 (1986): 21-36.
26 Fiorenza, In Memory of Her, xiv (emphasis added).
27 Ibid., 7-21.
28 Ibid., 29.
29 Ibid., 32.
30 Ibid., 33.
31 Ibid., 34 (emphasis added).
32 Ibid., 107.
33 Ibid., 119, citing Luke 17:21; and 122, citing Luke 1:52-53.
34 Ibid., 135. She develops this in book-length form in Jesus: Miriam’s Child, Sophia’s Prophet. Critical Issues in Feminist Christology (New York: Continuum, 1994); see below.
35 Ibid., 153-54 (emphasis added). See also her later book Jesus and the Politics of Interpretation (New York: Continuum, 2000).
36 See already Kathleen Corley, “The Egalitarian Jesus: A Christian Myth of Origins,” Forum New Series 1-2 (1988): 291-325 and the discussion in the previous chapter.
37 Kathleen Corley, Women and the Historical Jesus: Feminist Myths of Christian Origins (Santa Rosa, CA: Polebridge, 2002), 1.
38 Ibid., 4.
39 Ibid.
40 Ibid., 7.
41 Ibid., 10; see 148, notes 13-18.
42 Ibid., 143.
43 Ibid., 144.
44 Ibid., 144-45.
45 John H. Elliott, “Jesus Was Not an Egalitarian. A Critique of an Anachronistic and Idealist Theory,” Biblical Theology Bulletin 32, no. 3 (2002): 77.
46 Ibid., 78, 84, citing the instances of isos in Matt 20:12; Mark 14:46, 59; Luke 6:34; John 5:18; Acts 11:17; Phil 2:6; Rev 21:16; of isotēs in 1 Cor 8:13-14; Col 4:1; of isotimos in 2 Pet 1:1; and of isopsychos in Phil 2:20.
47 Ibid., 90.
48 John H. Elliott, “The Jesus Movement Was Not Egalitarian but Family-Oriented,” Biblical Interpretation 11, no. 2 (2003): 204.
49 Ibid., 205-6.
About a week ago I posted an article entitled, “Why Did God Create You Woman?” Since then I have received many comments. For the most part the comments have been from fellow complementarians. Some however have questioned the validity of the article as they state that it “sets out a stereotype taken from the writings of a patriarcal society.”
Peter R. Schemm, Jr.
] can help establish your tone, don’t rely on them to soften phrases that could be misinterpreted. Rewrite your sentence, instead, with the goal of precise communication.
