In recent years, theological
movements have grown up that center around specific moral issues. Less
concerned with Biblical interpretive models or metaphysics, they instead focus
reflection on God on key ethical struggles. Biblical scholarship has revealed
an important fact about Jesus, something that has long been lost on most
Christians: the specificity of Jesus' message. Jesus' brand of preaching
was not highly abstract. He was a particular person, of a particular time, with
particular pressing ethical and political issues he dealt with. We have good
reason to believe that the historical Jesus was Jewish-centric in His message
and that He had a particular concern for the plight of the Jews (CONVERSATIONAL
LOOK-UP). The Kingdom He was trying to usher in was a Kingdom that would
include and center round the Jewish people and would supplant the order that
had been put in place by the Romans. Yet Christianity has tended to focus on
the parts of Jesus' message that can be abstracted and applied to all people
all the time. We have de-judaized Jesus so that we can more easily appropriate
His teachings. By re-acquainting ourselves with Jesus' struggle within the
political and cultural milieu of His own day, we can begin to appreciate the
importance of doing theology within the context of specific struggles and
needs. In that way, we prevent our religion from being divorced from our real
lives, and we allow the community to find God within the very fabric of their
lives, rather than forcing a vision upon them that is cooked up on a computer
at a seminary or at home (yes, I'm aware of the irony).
Thus liberation theologians have
brought the Christian message to bear on the specific issues that concern third
world and oppressed peoples. They have discovered in Jesus' Jewish-centric
message of liberation a mirror for their own underdog status, and their own
struggle for freedom and prosperity. Politically active Christians have used
Christian imagery to energize movements for specific political issues of
varying stripes, realizing that Jesus was dealing with specific political
problems, they have been inspired to do the same, not shying away from the
political realm because of the moral dangers involved. Two movements of this
type that will be particularly important for our discussion of the Holy Spirit
are feminist theology and eco-theology.
Feminist theology's main goal has been to
champion the cause of women in a world where women too often and for too long
have suffered from abuse and oppression. It has rightly identified religion in
general and Biblical religion in particular as partly culpable for this evil, and
has sought to act as a corrective. Jesus' fight against specific oppression
inspires the feminist theologian's protest against paternalism in much the same
way it served to inspire the struggle of oppressed races, countries, and
classes through liberation theology. In some ways feminist theology is a branch
of that same movement. However, feminist theologians tend to focus much more on
Biblical theology, because the Bible itself struggles with the role of women in
society. Much of the Bible is misogynistic. In the Old Testament, women are
identified as the main cause of man's betrayal of God in the Garden of Eden
(Genesis 3:4-6, 3:16), they are treated as property and given lower rights than
men in marriage (Genesis 34, Deuteronomy 24, Hosea 3:2), and the Wisdom
writings are constantly warning against the evils that women bring upon men,
but little about the evil men can bring upon women. God is almost universally
identified as male, and there is at least the implication in this
identification that somehow the male experience of life is closer to the Divine
than the female experience of life. Over and against this tendency to exalt
maleness are a few individual protests, voices that proclaim the importance of
women for God, and their value alongside their male counterparts. The stories
of Deborah and Judith run counter to the subordinate roles women are seemingly
assigned by God in much of the Old Testament (Judges 4-5, Judith chapters
8-15), and their place as God's soldiers and messengers decry the idea that
somehow women don't have an equal share of the Divine within them. Even the
story of Eve's creation tends to run counter to the subordinate position women
are said to have in most of the Old Testament. In the first Genesis Creation
Story, God makes male AND female in His image. In the Second Genesis Creation
Story, contrary to popular translation, God does not make Eve out of Adam's
"rib". The word traditionally translated "rib" actually
means something like "side". What happens is that after God tires of trying
to make mankind a suitable animal companion (Genesis 2:18-25), He gets
frustrated and splits Adam in two, resulting in a male and female human
dynamic.
But the biggest 'feministic' protest
against misogynistic tendencies in the Old Testament is the Book of Ruth. The
book is focused almost entirely on the relationship between two women who are
left to struggle with a world where they have little rights, trying through
their love for each other to find a way out of utter despair. The most striking
imagery in the book can be found in chapter 4 verse 15, which claims that Ruth
is of more value to Naomi, her mother-in-law, than seven sons. This seems to me
to be a clear commentary against the prevailing male-centric voice of the
Bible.
The New Testament has a lot more to
commend itself when it comes to women's rights. Women play a big role in Jesus'
life, and Paul often speaks highly of women leaders in the early church, like
the deaconess Phoebe, and female Apostle Junia (Romans 16:1, 16:7). Paul's own
view that ultimately through Christ all are given equal access to God, also
tends to de-emphasize gender distinctions. However, there are other places
where Paul seems to reinforce the subordinate role of women. A big example is 1
Corinthians 14:34. Some people have suggested that this particular passage
seems out of place when put in context, and was probably edited in later. The
cadence and subject matter of the passage just doesn't match up with what
surrounds it. When I read the passage I definitely get the feeling that this is
the case. I'm inclined to think that the passage is a later redaction. The
subordination of women just doesn't match up with Paul's overall vision, one
where we all become one with Christ through the Holy Spirit. Gender distinctions
may make sense 'in the world', but not inside the church. Other passages found
in Timothy and elsewhere that seem to express similar sentiments to the 1
Corinthians passage are widely believed to be written pseudonymous long after
Paul's death. That doesn't change the fact that they are part of the canon, and
that the New Testament also has a strong misogynistic tradition, but it does
mean that this does not necessarily begin with Paul or Jesus.
None of the women-friendly passages
amounts to much when put against the general thrust of scripture. This
'conversation over the role of women' is downright depressing. The very fact
that women's equal status under God was ever questioned at all would be
disgusting enough. More abhorrent is the fact that the main voice in the
conversation speaks to the lesser status of women. Feminist theologians have
done us a service by helping us focus on those lesser voices of protest against
this prevailing view, and their criticism of that prevailing view is equally
important.
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