Reconsidering the Maleness of Jesus

Introduction

Today a Christology which elevates Jesus' maleness to ontologically necessary significance suggests that Jesus' humanity does not represent women at all. Incarnation solely into the male sex does not include women and so women are not redeemed.¹

Against several erroneous Christological proposals, the orthodox definition for Christology found in the statement of the Council of Chalcedon (451) provides a careful defense for the assertion that Jesus Christ was both God and man.² The deity and humanity of Jesus, Chalcedon demonstrates, must be affirmed simultaneously without the devaluation of either fact related to the person of Jesus Christ. Although such an important affirmation has been retained in orthodox Christology over the centuries, neither the language nor the concepts of the Chalcedonian definition have gone unchallenged.

One such challenge in contemporary Christology arises from feminist theologians.³ As feminists reflect on the person of Christ in light of their gendered experience, new insights and theological explorations into the meaning of Jesus the Christ for the lives of twentieth-century women and men are emerging.⁴ In Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen's estimation, the questions posed by feminist theologians with regard to Christology are illuminating: How can a "Son of God" be a Savior and representative of God's sons and daughters? How does Jesus' "maleness" relate to the other half of humankind? Is God the Son masculine or feminine or beyond? Kärkkäinen states, "The image of Christ is ambiguous for many contemporary women because it has served both as the source of life and as the legitimator of oppression."⁵

For feminists, the inevitable stumbling block for a Christology inclusive of women is Jesus the man, God incarnate in a male persona.⁶ Kathryn Greene-McCreight recognizes that orthodox Christology, which maintains the biblical fact of the maleness of Jesus, "poses difficulties for feminist theology insofar as feminist theology shares in modern theology's difficulty with the ‘scandal of particularity.'" She adds, "The notion that the one eternal God, creator of heaven and earth, could come to dwell with humanity in the person of a [male] Jewish carpenter is often offensive to modern sensibilities, which are drawn instead to the universal and the general."⁷ Thus, since the Christian tradition maintains that God particularly became man, feminist theologians allege that such an incarnation alienates one-half of humanity.

The point is that the doctrine of the incarnation does not directly address the female sex.⁸ Yet according to feminist theologians, church history actually reveals the inclination for the use of the incarnation against the female sex. Lisa Isherwood claims, "As the early proponents of feminist theology strove to understand the exclusion of women and women's experience in church practice and theological reflection, even in churches that had a strong social gospel, they were increasingly faced with the realization that it may be the very fabric of Christianity that caused the exclusion."⁹ Consequently, feminist theological analysis began to reveal "that the maleness of Christ himself may be part of the difficulty. . . . If Christ could not experience being female then the question was raised as to whether the female state could be redeemed."¹⁰

Feminists reiterate that Chalcedon, in its historical context, "make[s] clear that it is not Jesus' maleness that is doctrinally important but his humanity in solidarity with the whole suffering human race."¹¹ While the claim related to Jesus' solidarity with all of humanity is true, of course, feminists want to go beyond Chalcedon to say much more about the nature of the incarnation. In face of this, assert feminists, orthodox Christology introduces incredible trivialization into the doctrine of the incarnation by the "androcentric stress on the maleness of Jesus' humanity." Such emphasis on Jesus' maleness "fully warrants the charge of heresy and even blasphemy currently being leveled against it."¹²

Is it possible, then, for feminists to accept traditional Christology, with its retention of the maleness of Jesus? Julie Hopkins argues that "it is only possible to bring women into the centre of an incarnational christology if the traditional categories are gender reversible; if, in other words, we may speak of the Divine incarnated in a female body, ‘truly God and truly female'."¹³ Hopkins wants a full inclusion of the female into Christology, so that (as the Dutch feminist theologian Anne-Claire Mulder argues) Christian theology may speak of the female flesh becoming Word/Logos.¹⁴ For Hopkins (and feminist theology in general), if this proves to be impossible on Christian theological or moral grounds, then Mary Daly's famous dictum was correct when she observed, "If God ismale then the male is God."¹⁵

This article will argue that feminist Christological exploration and subsequent reconstruction should be rejected and deemed unacceptable for evangelical Christian theology. In so doing, the approach of this article will be to demonstrate both the feminist arguments against the maleness of Jesus Christ, as well as their alternative proposals for a Christology inclusive of feminist concerns. Finally, this article will conclude with an evaluation and critique of the contours of feminist Christology presented here, plus an affirmation of the necessity of the maleness of Christ.

Feminist Arguments against the Maleness of Jesus

Feminists advance numerous arguments against the maleness of Jesus. Feminist concerns touch various aspects of Christian theology as it relates to Christology—namely, anthropology, soteriology, and ecclesiology. The main arguments against the maleness of Jesus, with these broad theological areas in mind, are as follows.

A Tool for the Subordination of Women

Elizabeth Johnson argues that within the worldview of traditional Christology, the historical Jesus,

who was indisputably a male human being, is interpreted as the incarnation of the Logos, an ontological symbol connected with rationality and thus, according to Greek philosophy, with maleness. The Word made flesh is then related to human beings defined according to an androcentric anthropology that sees men as normative and women as derivative.¹⁶

What results is a Christology that functions as a sacred justification for the superiority of men over women. Because of this theological justification, Johnson surmises, "Women are inevitably relegated to a marginal role both in theory and practice, given the priority of the male savior figure within a patriarchal framework."¹⁷ If the maleness of Jesus is maintained, given such a pronounced anthropological dualism, as feminists argue it has been in the history of the church, then Christology must move in "an increasingly misogynist direction that not only excludes woman as representative of Christ in ministry but makes her a second-class citizen in both creation and redemption."¹⁸

The crux of the issue related to the use of Jesus' masculinity as a tool for the subordination of women surfaces in the ecclesial reality of a male dominated ministerial leadership. Although she overstates her case a bit by claiming that "much of the history of the doctrine of Christ clearly denies the relevance of Jesus' maleness, uplifting only that Jesus is a human being," Sondra Stalcup divulges a (perhaps the) critically important objection on behalf of feminist theologians:

[I]t is in fact the maleness of Jesus that has been used by the official church to continue the subordination of women by limiting their roles—most obviously, by denying women ordination to the priesthood or representative ministry. Feminists did not create the problem of Jesus' maleness, the official church did by using it inappropriately as a barrier, as a dividing line against women.¹⁹

The rejection of women from representative ministry as priest or pastor is evidence of the social location of this problematic usage of Jesus' masculinity against women. That is, feminists argue, in "an ecclesial community where official voice, vote and visibility belong by law only to men,"²⁰ women's subordination grounded in "the maleness of Christ as imaged through the centuries has damaged women's self-esteem by relegating [them] to second-class citizens."²¹ Thus, "[t]he belief that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us as a male indicates that thanks to their natural bodily resemblance, men enjoy a closer identification with Christ than do women. Men are not only theomorphic but, by virtue of their sex, also christomorphic in a way that goes beyond what is possible for women."²²

This male-dominated theology, that relegates woman to inferior status in both creation and redemption, has enjoyed considerable revival in recent years as the keystone of the conservative reaction to the movements for women's ordination (primarily in the Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Orthodox traditions),²³ but finds particular historical support from the theology of Thomas Aquinas.²⁴ Rosemary Radford Ruether argues that Aquinas's position that the male is the normative or generic sex of the human species places women in an inferior status. Aquinas argues that women were inferior to men, and in essence, defective. Thus, for Aquinas, "it follows that the incarnation of the Logos of God into the male is not a historical accident, but an ontological necessity."²⁵ We might argue, however, that the problem with Aquinas is not his Christology, but rather his anthropology. Anne Carr clarifies Ruether's problem with Aquinas's Christology:

Little of this argument occurs in Aquinas' treatise on Christology but is derived from his discussions of human nature and sacramental priesthood. Like the rest of the tradition, his Christological statements are general, and emphasize the fullness of the divine and human natures in Christ. Yet when Aquinas' anthropology is incorporated with his Christology, the distortion is clear: the Christological emphasis on the truly human is skewed by androcentric bias.²⁶

So, the fact that Jesus was a man is used to legitimize men's superiority over women in the belief that a particular honor, dignity, and normativity accrues to the male sex because it was chosen by the Son of God "himself " in the incarnation. Indeed, Johnson sharply avers, thanks to their sex, men are said to be more conformed to the image of Christ than are women. In the end, "women's physical embodiment thus becomes a prison that shuts them off from full identification with Christ, except as mediated through the christic male. For this mentality, the idea that the Word might have become female flesh is not even seriously imaginable."²⁷

Inadequate Metaphor/Symbol

As seen above, the claim has been made by feminist theologians that the "maleness" of Jesus validates the oppression of women. Mary Daly's scathing insight cuts to the heart of the issue for feminist Christological exploration: "If the symbol [of a masculine Christ] can be ‘used' [to oppress women] and in fact has a long history of being ‘used' that way, isn't this an indication of some inherent deficiency of the symbol itself?"²⁸ Since the Christ symbol (as masculine) has been used against women, Daly is not alone in asserting that the symbol should be changed to become more amenable to women.

The biblical referents for Jesus as "Son" and God as "Father" must not be taken to reflect any reality about who God is, it is argued, but should be taken metaphorically to help us understand God in the terms of our own language. Thus, feminists say, the maleness of the historical Jesus has nothing to do with manifesting a male "Son" who, in turn, images a male "Father." Since the symbol is merely metaphorical, feminists posit that the divine "Father" is equally "Mother," and the "Son" is equally "Daughter." Yet even the parental metaphor is lacking according to Ruether: "Perhaps the parental language for transcendence and immanence itself should be relativized by some metaphor other than parent and child to better state this relationship between God transcendent and God manifest in creation and history."²⁹ Further, the title "Son of God" is an inadequate metaphor for divine immanence, since it has been taken literally and seen as further indication that the Logos is male. These notions of the maleness of God, in turn, affect the Christian interpretation of the imago dei.³⁰

Barbara Darling-Smith presents a metaphorical Christology as a solution to this problem. "Through metaphors we make connections between unlike things; metaphors undercut literalism because a metaphor, as a new and unconventional interpretation of reality, means that the two objects both are and are not like each other."³¹ Sallie McFague also prefers a metaphorical theology, since "all talk of God is indirect: no words or phrases refer directly to God, for God-language can refer only through the detour of a description that properly belongs elsewhere.... The point that metaphor underscores is that in certain matters there can be no direct description."³²

So, through metaphorical theology feminists are able to perceive Jesus as a "parable of God." Darling-Smith says, "As opposed to incarnational Christology, which sees Jesus as ‘the Godhead, veiled in flesh,' parabolic Christology is not Jesusolatry....It rejects any idolatry or any identification of a finite creature with God, including Jesus of Nazareth, who both is and is not God."³³ Since a parabolic approach says Jesus is and is not God, it relativizes Jesus' particularity, viz., his maleness, at the same time that it universalizes the God whom Jesus metaphorically represents.³⁴

The feminist move toward a metaphorical Christology is a strategy against the traditional Christological commitment to a patriarchal worldview. The masculine Christ symbol is part and parcel of the androcentric perspective offered in the Bible. Feminists claim that "since the records about Jesus gathered in the New Testament were written and collected by men for men (so it is claimed), and the canon ratified by hierarchical androcentric political maneuvering, women's voices were excluded from the canon."³⁵ For this reason the Christ symbol is deficient and needs revision. Johnson contends, "Given the intrinsic link between the patriarchal imagination in language and in structures, to liberate Christological language from a monopoly of male images and concepts is to create a necessary, even if not sufficient, condition for further change in the church's consciousness and social order."³⁶

Another reason why the symbol is deficient is that traditional Christology is built upon an androcentric image of deity. Isherwood notes, "While Christianity has never claimed that God was literally male, the Hellenistic underpinning has led to many assumptions about the nature of God and normative humanity. There has been an unspoken, yet enacted, androcentric bias, which has reduced the place of women and men in the world, holding them as it does to very outmoded and reductive notions of humanness."³⁷ Since the man Jesus is confessed to be the revelation of God, the Christ symbol points to maleness as an essential characteristic of divine being itself. This is exacerbated by exclusive use of father and son metaphors to interpret Jesus' relationship to God.³⁸ Perhaps the only option for feminist Christology is to castrate Christianity and release it from its patriarchal trappings.³⁹

Jeopardy of Women's Salvation

Although the ecclesial subordination of women from representative ministry (assumed to be grounded in Jesus' maleness) is the most obvious location of feminist angst, Jesus' masculinity also raises important soteriological concerns for women. The concern for women's salvation related to the maleness of Jesus is drawn from several important historical affirmations. First, Johnson reminds us, "the Nicene Creed confesses, ‘et homo factus est' (‘and was made man'). But if in fact what is meant is et vir factus est, if maleness is essential for the christic role, then women are cut out of the loop of salvation, for female sexuality was not assumed by the Word made flesh."⁴⁰ Indeed, the Chalcedonian affirmation that Jesus was "truly God and truly man" could raise this problem, whether or not the maleness of Jesus is a point of necessity "for us and for our salvation."

Second, given the anthropological dualism (i.e., Aquinas) that essentially divorces male from female humanity, feminists argue, the maleness of Christ puts the salvation of women in jeopardy. Thus, Gregory of Nazianzus's famous aphorism, "What is not assumed is not healed"⁴¹ takes on incredible significance for women. Since Jesus assumed a male human body, what does this mean for women? Johnson believes this has enormous ramifications for women and their inclusion in salvation:

In addition to casting both God and the human race in an androcentric mold, sexist Christology jeopardizes women's salvation, at least in theory.... The early Christian axiom "What is not assumed is not redeemed, but what is assumed is saved by union with God" sums up the insight that Christ's solidarity with all of humanity is what is crucial for salvation.... If maleness is constitutive for the incarnation and redemption, female humanity is not assumed and therefore not saved.⁴²

So, to Ruether's searching question, "Can a male savior save women?", interpretation of the malenessof Christ as essential must answer "No," despite Christian belief in the universality of God's saving intent.⁴³

Relevant to this issue is the feminist allegation that Jesus, as a man, was unable to understand the experiences of women, since he did not assume a female human body. For this reason many have abandoned Christianity because of its patriarchal framework. Ruether questions whether Christology can be liberated from patriarchy at all because of its strong link with symbols of male-dominance. She states, "Certainly many feminists have already concluded that the maleness of Christ is so fundamental to Christianity that women cannot see themselves as liberated through him."⁴⁴

Radical feminists such as Mary Daly or members of the Women's Spirituality Movement have already declared that women must reject Christ as redeemer for women and seek instead a female divinity and messianic symbol.⁴⁵ So, if there is to be found or constructed a feminist Christology that includes woman as well as man in "the icon of God, the male hegemony must be deconstructed such that the image of God made Flesh is seen and experienced as female as well as male."⁴⁶

Feminists conclude that the maleness of Christ, as an essential component of the incarnation and revelation of God in human flesh, removes women as beneficiaries of salvation. In fact, "good news [of Jesus' redemption] is stifled when Jesus' maleness, which belongs to his historical identity, is interpreted as being essential to his redeeming christic function and identity. Then the Christ functions as a religious tool for marginalizing and excluding women."⁴⁷

Maleness as an Irrelevant Particularity

Aside from the fact that many feminists are willing to admit that the historicity of Jesus' maleness is important for his mission and ministry (to be discussed below), others deem "maleness" as an irrelevant particularity of Jesus. Ruether notes that feminists could accept Jesus' particularities, but must not confuse them—especially his maleness—with "the essence of Christ as God's Word incarnate." Unfortunately, she avers, "what we find in most Christology is an effort to dissolve most aspects of Jesus' particularity (his Jewishness, as a first-century messianic Galilean) in order to make him the symbol of universal humanity; yet an insistence that the historical particularity of his maleness is essential to his ongoing representation."⁴⁸

Stalcup is willing to say much more, however. "Theologically, in the matter of understanding the redemptive experience of Jesus as the Christ, there is no material significance in Jesus' biological makeup, or in any fact about him in the past. As an event of God, as the eschatological event in every new present, Jesus' sex—or Judaism or race or marital status or any fact of what he said or did in and of himself—is not relevant in confessing him as the Christ."⁴⁹ Perhaps the only reason why any of these particularities are significant—Jesus' being male especially—or why they have revelatory importance is because of the meaning of maleness in patriarchal history and culture. ⁵⁰ Nevertheless, even if feminists acknowledge that Jesus' maleness is theologically irrelevant, they still have a potential problem with the impact of male symbols. Stalcup is right: "In most churches today, the reliance on traditional and historical language and imagery makes it quite difficult to ‘get around' the maleness issue," even if it is deemed to be irrelevant to who Jesus was and is.⁵¹

If Jesus' maleness was simply accidental, then feminists posit the possibility of a female incarnation. Johnson is surely not unique in her conclusion: "Could God have become a human being as a woman? The question strikes some people as silly or worse. Theologically, though, the answer is Yes. Why not? If women are genuinely human and if God is the deep mystery of holy love, then what is to prevent such an incarnation?"⁵²

Feminist Alternatives for an "Inclusive" Christology

There is, as yet, no universally agreed feminist Christology, at least one that addresses all of the critiques leveled at traditional Christology. What we do have, however, is a number of explorative possibilities that seek to open up traditional Christology to an inclusive, feminist perspective.⁵³  Feminist theologians have struggled to revise traditional Christology in a way that is "consonant with their own experience and embraces the perceptions, values, aspirations and embodiedness of what it means to be a female in today's world."⁵⁴ Broadly speaking, much of feminist Christology shares with modern Christology a preference for a Christology from below.

The approaches considered here are not complete Christologies; rather, they are attempts to re-image Jesus in ways that take women's experiences seriously. Each of them seeks to "make room for the female within the male image."⁵⁵ The underlying impetus for feminist Christological reconstructions is due, in large part, to the arguments presented above, but another important factor spurs on feminist revision: the notion that Jesus may need women to redeem him, to free him from the chains of male arrogance and patriarchal abuses.⁵⁶

Jesus as Iconoclastic Prophet

One alternative proposal to guard against the maleness of Jesus in traditional Christology is to focus on Jesus' message and not his person. Ruether poses the question as to how we should understand the relationship of Jesus as a historical individual in all his particularity, and yet also make the particularities no longer limits on his representation as the embodiment of God's universal new Word? She then provides her answer: "We should do that, not by emphasizing biological particularities, but rather by emphasizing his message as expressed in his ministry.... In this perspective we see that the emphasis on Jesus' maleness as essential to his ongoing representation not only is not compatible but is contradictory to the essence of his message as good news to the marginalized qua women."⁵⁷

According to Ruether and other liberation theologians, what is most significant about Jesus is his message of good news to the poor and the marginalized. What is paradigmatic about Jesus is not his biological ontology, but rather his person as a lived message and practice. For Ruether, "that message is good news to the poor, a confrontation with systems of religion and society that incarnate oppressive privilege, and an affirmation of the despised as loved and liberated by God."⁵⁸

The prophetic iconoclastic Christ, represented primarily through liberation theologies (such as feminist theology), shows that Jesus' significance "does not reside in his maleness, but, on the contrary, in the fact that he has renounced this system of [male] domination and seeks to embody in his person the new humanity of service and mutual empowerment."⁵⁹

Johnson concludes, "While Jesus was indeed a first-century Galilean Jewish man, and thus irredeemably particular, as we all are, what transpires in the Incarnation is inclusive of the humanity of all human beings of all races and historical conditions and both genders."⁶⁰ Jesus' ability to be Savior does not reside in his maleness but in his loving, liberating history lived in the midst of the powers of evil and oppression and male-domination.⁶¹

Envisioning Christ as a Female

A second alternative Christological exploration involves envisioning Christ's humanity in female terms, which Ellen Leonard claims has a long history in the Christian tradition.⁶² Leonard overstates her case, however, since her "long history" only includes obscure thinkers from medieval spirituality. Notwithstanding the (very) limited and ambiguous historical references for thinking of Jesus in female terms, some contemporary feminists are adopting this approach for Christological reconstruction.

Almost unbelievably, some feminists claim that Jesus was actually genetically female. Citing medical and scientific studies,⁶³ Letha Scanzoni and Nancy Hardesty argue that since Jesus was born of a virgin and had only one human parent, a female, he "was undoubtedly genetically female even though phenotypically male.... His genes must have been XX rather than XY.... Thus, [at the least] Jesus may well have been biologically both male and female."⁶⁴

Three objections are in order. First, this position is extremely rare. While many feminists downplay or reject the importance of Jesus' maleness, they at least recognize the historical fact that he was a human male. Second, Millard Erickson argues that it is possible that Mary did not contribute anything in the incarnation (not even an ovum), but that God could have implanted in her an already fertilized ovum.⁶⁵ Third, Jack Cottrell notes that while a process such as this is possible (which he calls parthenogenesis), which will produce offspring that are of the same gender as the parent (like cloning), "the virgin birth, however, is not a purely natural event but an intensely supernatural act on the part of God.... The very fact that his maleness required a special miracle demonstrates the truth that the maleness of the Messiah was a deliberate choice on the part of God."⁶⁶

Although the proposal of Scanzoni and Hardesty is rare, they point to a more common feminist consideration for including the female into the incarnation, and that is the idea of Jesus as androgynous. The androgynous Christ, feminists claim, is represented in church history through people like Julian of Norwich, the Shakers, and some forms of Pietism. All androgynous Christologies exhibit a sense that a masculinist Christ is inadequate to express full human redemption, that Christ must in some way represent both male and female.⁶⁷     

Not all feminists agree that an androgynous Christ is the way to take feminist Christology, however. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza argues that androgynous Christologies do not challenge "the Western cultural sex/gender system and its androcentric language," and since it does not say enough, other alternatives should be offered from feminists.⁶⁸ Ruether is also critical of androgynous Christologies because they simply mask the real problem: "The very concept of androgyny presupposes a psychic dualism that identifies maleness with one-half of human capacities and femaleness with the other. As long as Christ is still presumed to be, normatively, a male person, androgynous Christologies will carry an androcentic bias."⁶⁹ Nevertheless, androgynous Christology is increasingly popular among feminists as an explanation for incarnation in light of Jesus' maleness.

Relocation of Christ to the Community

Perhaps the more radical solution for feminist Christological reconstruction is found in a complete definition of what "Christ" is supposed to be. Some feminists are willing to dislocate Christianity from the historical person Jesus Christ completely. Rita Nakashima Brock asserts that "Jesus Christ need not be the authoritative center of a feminist Christian faith."⁷⁰ Brock relocates Christ in the community of which Jesus is one historical part, such that it is the community, not Jesus that is the locus of redemption.⁷¹ Brock is clear that Jesus has been eclipsed by "Christa/Community":

The feminist Christian commitment is not to a savior who redeems us by bringing God to us. Our commitment is to love ourselves and others into wholeness. Our commitment is to a divine presence with us here and now, a presence that works through the mystery of our deepest selves and our relationships, constantly healing us and nudging us toward a wholeness of existence we only fitfully know. That healed wholeness is not Christ; it is ourselves.⁷²

When feminists remove the exclusive, perfect Godman Jesus Christ from the center of Christology, women may reclaim themselves and, then, reclaim the historical Jesus. Brock states, "We may reclaim Jesus as a remarkable man for his time. De-divinizing him allows us to appreciate his remarkability without his humanity or theology being the measuring rod for our existence."⁷³

Thus, feminists contend, Jesus' historical identity is not significant for Christology. Jesus becomes irrelevant for Christology, save the prophetic message that he embodied. In this way, his particulars, especially maleness, "[do] not constitute the essence of Christ, but, in the Spirit, redeemed and redeeming humanity does," ⁷⁴ since the community of the baptized now embodies the same message. Feminists conclude, then, that Christ is quite accurately portrayed as black, old, Gentile, female, Asian or Polish, etc., or whatever the demographic of the community exhibits.⁷⁵ Ruether concurs, "Christ, as redemptive person and Word of God, is not to be encapsulated ‘once-for-all' in the historical Jesus. The Christian community continues Christ's identity. As vine and branches Christic personhood continues in our sisters and brothers."⁷⁶

Closely aligned with this Christological reconstruction is the argument that Jesus' significance is tied to his iconoclastic prophetism. By prioritizing the message and not the gender of Jesus, Christians become a "redemptive community not by passively receiving a redemption ‘won' by Christ alone, but rather by collectively embodying this path of liberation in a way that transforms people and social systems," men and women alike.⁷⁷ Feminists resist separating this ongoing redemptive work from the Christian community. In as much as the community embodies the message of Jesus, then redemption is carried on and communicated through them. So, "Christ can take on the face of every person and group and their diverse liberation struggles. We must be able to encounter Christ as black, as Asian, as Aboriginal, as women. The coming Christ, then, the uncompleted future of redemption, is not the historical Jesus returned, but rather the fullness of all this human diversity gathered together in redemptive community."⁷⁸

Jesus as the Incarnation of Female Divinity

A final alternative from feminist theologians for Christology explores the notion of Jesus as the incarnation of feminine divinity. This alternative is probably the most influential and substantive of the proposals offered by feminists. Although the subject of Jesus as the incarnation of Sophia, or wisdom, merits its own treatment, a brief examination will be presented here. Wisdom Christology provides a textual alternative to traditional Christology, which many religious and evangelical feminists find attractive. "Sophia" has become an important theological construct over the past ten years in feminist theology.⁷⁹ Greene McCreight observes that this perspective cannot be passed off as mere flight of imaginative fancy. While creative feminist Christology makes much use of the imagination in theological reflection, the proposal of Jesus as Sophia incarnate is grounded in historical and biblical reconstructions of the feminine divine.⁸⁰

Some feminists prefer to see the biblical canon itself as the vehicle that allows for and encourages the reemergence of the feminine divine.⁸¹ Feminists appeal to biblical texts, such as Job 28, Proverbs 8, Luke 11:49, Matt 23:34, and 1 Cor 1:24, 30, for evidence of a remaining Sophia tradition within the canon itself.⁸² Greene-McCreight declares, "It is thus the scriptures [sic] themselves which lean toward the emergence of Sophia, and the reemergence of Sophia can therefore be furthered by careful examination and rereading of biblical texts."⁸³

When feminists interpret the incarnation in terms of the enfleshing of the sophia/wisdom of God, the woman-ness of God actually takes historical shape in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus in his embodied existence expresses the intimate, seeking, embracing, longing, passionate consummating lure of the divine Wisdom of God. As Johnson suggests, such a Christology has the potential not only to relativize traditional Christology, with its androcentric bias, but also to present a Jesus who is both male and female.⁸⁴

Johnson believes that using the female figure of personified Wisdom to speak about Jesus as the Christ facilitates an inclusive rather than exclusive interpretation of the incarnation. The foundational metaphor of "Jesus, the Wisdom of God" relieves the monopoly of the male metaphors of Logos and Son and destabilizes patriarchal imagination. "Whoever espouses a wisdom Christology," Johnson states, "is asserting that Sophia in all her fullness was in Jesus so that in his historicity he embodies divine mystery in creative and saving involvement with the world."⁸⁵

Here we seem to be getting at the heart of the matter, for the metaphor "Son" and the relation between Father and Son have been the controlling categories of classical Christology. Feminists insist that, when we release the symbol of Wisdom from subordination to Word or Son, different possibilities for Christology open up to us. So, according to this feminist explanation of the incarnation, Jesus is the human being Sophia became.⁸⁶

The importance of Jesus as Sophia incarnate becomes clear with reference to the subject of this article: Jesus as Sophia incarnate "breaks the stranglehold of androcentric thinking which fixates on the maleness of Jesus, the male metaphors of Logos and Son, and the relationship between Father and Son. This leads to the situation where gender is decentered, where it is not constitutive for the Christian doctrine of incarnation or for speech about Christ."⁸⁷ For feminists, Christ as incarnate wisdom has genuine possibilities for an inclusive Christology. They argue, however, since the Jewish understanding of Sophia and the Christian view of Jesus as Sophia developed within a patriarchal social structure, the resulting theology and Christology in the biblical record are not truly inclusive.⁸⁸ That is, "[t]he male human incarnation overwhelms the female divine persona of Sophia."⁸⁹

Two objections to the feminist position of Wisdom Christology need to be raised. First, feminists are inconsistent on whether Sophia is actually the God of traditional theism. For example, Brock claims that "Wisdom, or Sophia, is not currently a feminine equivalent to Yahweh or logos, though we might work to make her so."⁹⁰ But Fiorenza and Johnson both assert (in response to the allegation that their views are "pagan") that "Wisdom theology does not posit a second divine power to compete with Yahweh but takes up the language of pagan goddesses to speak of Yahweh, thus, in effect, subverting paganism."⁹¹ The latter case seems to say that Sophia is just another name for Yahweh, the God of the Bible. Ultimately, as discussed above, the term is metaphorical; so as long as Sophia, or the feminine is represented as divinity, feminists may conclude either way and still retain the force of their reconstruction.         

Second, Douglas McCready clarifies that "Wisdom" in the Scriptures (i.e., Proverbs 8) is a personification and is a created entity.⁹² The Wisdom literature, particularly "Proverbs, the Wisdom of Solomon and Ecclesiasticus describe the wisdom of God in personified language, yet these personifications do not appear to be or to be intended to be persons or hypostases."⁹³ Other New Testament scholars, such as F. F. Bruce, N. T. Wright, Ben Witherington, and Martin Hengel agree that Paul applied and modified everything previously attributed to Wisdom to Christ.⁹⁴ Thus, the feminist position that Jesus is Sophia incarnate is nothing but conjecture. There is no suggestion in the New Testament anywhere that Jesus is the incarnation of some female deity. While on the surface this alternative Christological proposal from feminist theologians seems attractive because of their appeal to biblical texts, their proposal is unacceptable on the grounds that it cannot sustain itself under proper biblical exegesis and sound hermeneutics.

Evaluation and Critique

Although feminist arguments against the maleness of Jesus and their Christological reconstructions are extreme in response to traditional Christological claims, several important fundamental critiques from feminists deserve clarification. Feminists raise important questions related to the nature of God's essence, the nature of salvation, and the nature of the image of God in humanity.

The feminist anthropological concern may be summarized as such: "The basic problem identified from the feminist academic perspective is that Jesus Christ has been interpreted within a patriarchal framework, with the result that the good news of the gospel for all has been twisted into the bad news of masculine privilege."⁹⁵ Whereas feminists react negatively to the theological anthropology of Aquinas, evangelicals may also stand against such erroneous thinking. Aquinas was wrong on this issue. Women are not inferior to men biologically in any way, neither is the image of God lesser in and through them (Gen 1:27). Unfortunately, church and society have played a huge role in the subordination of women. However, Christian theology may affirm—even in a patriarchal, complementarian worldview—the biblical doctrine of the image of God as male and female, without distortion, neither in a chauvinistic nor a feminist interpretation.⁹⁶

Feminists also raise an important soteriological concern. When traditional Christology upholds the necessity of Jesus' maleness, feminists contend that the salvation of women is in jeopardy. Assuming complete egalitarianism, feminists cannot allow the traditional claim for the necessity of Jesus' maleness. Once the inappropriate anthropology lurking in the background of feminist concerns is met, there is no basis to allege that Jesus, as a male, cannot be the savior of all people, including women. Bruce Ware concurs,

Women need not fear that since Christ did not come as a woman he cannot understand them, because in coming as a man, he came as a human being and so understands the human natures common to men and women alike.... Christ the man shared our (common) human nature, so that men and women alike can have full confidence that he understands our plight (e.g., Heb 2:18; 4:15-16). So, while Scripture clearly indicates Christ came as a man ... we also realize that his coming as a man was therefore also as a human. As a man, he partook of our nature to live a human life and bear our sins. Christ the man, yes. But, Christ in the human nature of every man and woman, also, yes.⁹⁷

So in response to feminist soteriological concerns, "This means that there is no basis for the claim or the fear that if the identity of Christ is that of male, then in the incarnation he represents males only and is able to redeem males only. The common human nature of both sexes is fully represented by either sex."⁹⁸

Finally, feminists raise an important theological concern related to the ontology of God. Johnson states, "Jesus' historical maleness is used to reinforce an exclusively male image of God. If Jesus as a man is the revelation of God, so the usually implicit reasoning goes, then this points to maleness as an essential characteristic of divine being itself."⁹⁹ Feminists assume that since Jesus was male, and he was God incarnate, then God is male. The problem is not, then, the divinity of Jesus, nor even his humanity, but his very maleness.¹⁰⁰

Greene-McCreight clarifies,

Here is the problem: the maleness of Jesus "leaks" into the Godhead like an infectious disease, rendering unclean our understanding of God and therefore also our understanding of our own maleness and femaleness. Now, decades after Mary Daly's charge that "if God is male then male is God," as the result of its tacit acceptance across the denominational spectrum of American Christianity, we have seen numerous revisions of prayer books and hymnals, new "translations" and paraphrases of the scriptures, not to mention the reworkings of Christology such as we have seen here. This is done with the intent of plugging up and blocking the leaking masculinity of Jesus from infecting the Godhead, thus preventing the perception of the masculinity of God from deifying the human male.¹⁰¹

What is the answer to the charge that if Jesus was male, then God is male? Perhaps we should understand that God has chosen to reveal himself in a certain way, using certain language to define himself. Ware argues, "Now, it is true that God is not in essence male, so also is it true that neither the eternal Father nor the eternal Son is male; neither the divine essence, nor the eternal Persons of the Godhead are gendered, literally and really." He continues, "So, why is the First Person of the Trinity the eternal ‘Father,' and the Second Person, the eternal ‘Son'? Must this not be the language God has chosen to indicate the type of eternal relationship that exists between the first and second Persons?"¹⁰²

With feminist concerns presented, two major critiques will conclude this paper. First, much of feminist reconstruction may be attributed to a faulty starting point, namely, women's experience. Second, as follows, is that the loss of a textual approach (with proper exegetical and hermeneutical issues included) to Christology results in wrong conclusions about the maleness of Jesus.

Faulty Starting Point: Women's Experience

Given a "hermeneutic of suspicion" towards Scripture and the Christian tradition, feminist theologians see women's experience as a new, legitimate focus of theological concern and inquiry.¹⁰³ The problem is, however, that it is very difficult to define what is meant by women's experience. Nevertheless, feminists insist that women's experience is normative for constructive Christian theology, and thus, is essential to the formulation of an inclusive Christology. Isherwood raises the critical feminist assumption here:

If [Jesus] was fully a man, to argue that he was fully human negates the place of female experience in humanness, and he did not know how it felt to be a woman. If he did somehow experience being both male and female, then he was either transgendered or not fully human. Being human is an experience and that experience is, in our day, and was in the time of Jesus, a gendered experience.¹⁰⁴

The error here is to assume that "someone who is fully male (and presumably, someone who is fully female) would not possess this common human nature." Cottrell rightly argues that a "fully male (or female) individual possesses the common human nature but also possesses something in addition to it: maleness (or femaleness). Being male, as was Jesus, in no way subtracts from the fullness of humanity shared by males and females alike. Eliminating his maleness does not make him more human; it makes him less than human."¹⁰⁵

Certainly we could take Isherwood's contention to its logical conclusion. Since Jesus did not know how it felt to be a heroine addict, diabetic, a white male, homosexual, handicapped, geriatric, Albino, quadriplegic, deaf, etc., then are none of these able to be redeemed by Jesus? He did not "assume" any of these particularities in his flesh. It seems, contextually, then, if what Jesus "assumed" is saved, then only Jewish males will be redeemed. But the issue is much greater than simply the issues of women's salvation in Jesus; the issue is whether or not Jesus is the Messiah at all, and the savior of the world.

This is exactly the point that feminists miss related to the humanity of Jesus, especially with reference to their reaction to historical statements related to Christology, such as Jesus was "truly God and truly man" and "what he has not assumed he has not healed." The point they miss is that Jesus has take upon himself in the incarnation a common human nature inclusive of all people, male and female alike.¹⁰⁶ This does not mean that Jesus was androgynous, however, since he was a man. What this does mean—and this would relieve many of the feminist arguments of their potency—is that Jesus became a human being in order to represent our race, including women (Rom 5:12-21).

Loss of Textual Approach

In tandem with the normativeness of women's experience for theological construction is the propensity among feminists to jettison the Bible altogether. A common criticism of the Bible is that it is nothing more than an androcentric, patriarchal document, created by men and for men, and as a result it is not acceptable for women as a source of authority. In fact, many feminists who decry the masculine images for God and Christ suggest that for a genuine theology of liberation for women, the Bible and its Christ need to be left behind.¹⁰⁷

Not all feminists want to surrender the Bible to traditional Christianity, however. The Bible carries enormous political and social power that many feminists want to harness for their own theological agendas and explorations. Carter Heyward contends that feminists must "claim the authority to play freely with both Scripture and subsequent tradition" in order to re-image Jesus and validate their experiences as women.¹⁰⁸ She concludes, "To re-image Jesus [involves] letting go of old images.... It is to sketch images of Jesus within, and for the benefit of, our communities—of seminarians, women, gay people, black people, poor people, whoever our people are. Our images do not necessarily reflect Mark's image, or John's or Augustine's, or Luther's."¹⁰⁹

The loss of a textually defined Christ opens up descriptors for who Jesus is, or ought to be, that are inappropriate for Christology. Yet some feminists argue that other cultures or demographics inculturate Jesus into their own language, etc. If this is the case, then why cannot women do the same thing? Teresa Berger notes, "It is worth thinking about why we have become so accustomed to a Black Christ figure or a Campesino on the cross or a Chinese Holy Family as legitimate forms of the inculturation of the Gospel—while a female Christ child in the manger or woman on the cross appear to many of us as incomprehensible or unacceptable."¹¹⁰

The inculturation of a Black Christ or a Campesino Christ are illegitimate forms to represent the biblical Christ, though. Jesus was not Black, or Campesino, nor could he be as the Messiah; he was a Jew and that is how we must understand him biblically and theologically. So, this argument or question itself is misguided. The point is, for feminists, if Christian theologians allow or tolerate the image of Christ as a Black or Chinese man, then why is there no toleration or allowance for a female Christ?

Christology must be obtained from the canonical narrative of Scripture. Apart from this basic methodological and theological commitment, Christology will take the shape of whatever the "community" desires, including feminine reconstructions. For the purposes of this article, however, Greene-McCreight rightly targets the main issue: "the claim about the importance of Jesus' maleness is a specifically theological claim based on the logic of narrative reading of the scriptures. While it makes sense to say that Jesus' maleness is an accident in the technical philosophical sense, the narrative context, such as it is, would not allow a female savior.¹¹¹

Few feminist theologians, as we have seen, want actually to deny Jesus' maleness. But they do want to deny that his being male is related to his soteriological significance. Greene-McCreight contends, "However, since Jesus was a Jew who fulfilled the promises to Israel and offered up once and for all the perfect sacrifice, he had to be male. If he were not male and a Jew—indeed, a free Jewish male—how could the baptismal promise of Galatians 3:27-29 have been granted?"¹¹²

Must Jesus, as the Christ, have been male? If Christian theology desires to place itself under the inspiration and authority of Scripture, then the answer must be yes. The maleness of Jesus must be understood in the context of a "thick text" narrative.¹¹³ That is, an "intratextual" reading of the reliable narrative of Scripture is necessary for Christology.¹¹⁴ The particularities of who Jesus was, and was meant to be, are not irrelevant to the story of Scripture related to the Messiah and his mission.

Ware's article, "Could Our Savior Have Been a Woman?" helpfully shows the relevance of Jesus' maleness for his incarnational mission, as it arises from the narrative of Scripture. Ware offers twelve important reasons "for concluding that the male gender of Jesus was essential both to the reality of his incarnation identity and to the accomplishment of his incarnation mission."¹¹⁵ His twelve reasons are (with scriptural references):

(1) Jesus Christ's pre-incarnate existence and identity is clearly revealed to be that of the eternal Son of the Father.

(2) Jesus came as the Second Adam, the Man who stands as Head over his new and redeemed race (Rom 5:12-21; 1 Cor 15:21-22).

(3) The Abrahamic covenant requires that the Savior who would come, as the promised descendant of Abraham, would be a man (Genesis 12; 15; 17; genealogies of Matthew 1 and Luke 3; Galatians 3).

(4) The Davidic covenant explicitly requires that the One who will reign forever on the throne of David be a Son of David, and hence a man (2 Samuel 7; Ezek 34:23-24; 37:24-28; Luke 1:31-33).

(5) The new covenant of Jer 31:31-34 requires that the Savior who comes will actually accomplish the forgiveness of sins it promises, and to do this, the Savior must be a man.

(6) The Savior who would come must come as a prophet like unto Moses, as predicted by Moses and fulfilled in Jesus Christ, and so he must be a man (Deut 18:15; Acts 3:22).

(7) Our new and permanent High Priest, whose office is secured as sins are atoned for and full pardon is pleaded on our behalf before the Father, must be a man.

(8) Christ came also as the glorious King of Kings, reigning over the nations in splendor and righteousness, and to be this King, he must be a man (Isa 9:6-7; Heb 1:8 [reflecting Ps 45:67]; Matt 19:28; Rev 19:11-21).

(9) The incarnate mission and ministry of Jesus required that he come as a man.

(10) Because the risen Christ is now presented to the Church, not only as her Lord and King, but also as her Bridegroom, the Savior to come must have been a man (Ephesians 5; Rev 18:23; 19:7; 21:2, 9; 22:17).

(11) Because our Savior came as the "Son of God" it is necessary that he come as a man.

(12) Because our Savior came as the "Son of Man" it is necessary that he come as a man.

These reasons, reflecting the messianic trajectory of the narrative of Scripture, present a strong case for the necessity of Jesus' gender as a male.

Conclusion

Feminist arguments against the maleness of Jesus, as well as their Christological reconstructive proposals, have been demonstrated and found unacceptable. While feminists offer certain important critiques (albeit clouded by their worldview) related to traditional Christology, their reactions to certain abuses of biblical doctrine are unwarranted for a complete revision of the nature and purpose of Jesus the Christ.

McCready's conclusion is fitting: "Rejection or reformulation of the doctrine of [Christ] would eviscerate Christianity. The result would be nothing like that which has grown and spread for nearly two thousand years." He adds, "Every distinctive Christian belief would have to be discarded, from the doctrine of God and a realistic picture of human sinfulness to the ethical expectations and promise of divine grace. The modern attempt to make Christianity relevant by removing one of its more challenging teachings would end by making Christianity irrelevant and even destroying it."¹¹⁶