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Non-Patriarchal Salvation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2014

Bernard Cooke
Bernard Cooke*
Affiliation:
College of the Holy Cross
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Extract

Among the more fundamental—and for that very reason more complex—elements in the present reassessing of women's role in Christianity is the issue of the “masculinity” of God and the masculinity of Jesus. How are women, without conforming to the discriminations inherent in a patriarchal culture, to relate to God as a “he” or to accept as their savior a Christ who has never shared their femininity.

One of the key aspects of this issue, though by no means the only one, is the theological: how does Christian belief address itself to this issue, suggest “solutions,” or perhaps limit the range of acceptable feminist understandings of God. The present essay is meant to explore this theological dimension by relating New Testament understandings of Jesus' “Abba” experience (I) to two questions: How did Jesus' masculinity and his experience of God affect one another? (II) and In Christianity how appropriate is the name “Father” for God? (III).

Type
Articles
Information
Horizons , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , Spring 1983 , pp. 22 - 31
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 1983

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References

1 Though not the first to mention the issue, Daly's, MaryBeyond God the Father (Boston: Beacon, 1973)Google Scholar was a major influence in highlighting the problem of calling God “Father.” Since its appearance in 1973, there have been a number of substantial discussions of the topic, such as Hamerton-Kelly, Robert, God the Father, Theology and Patriarchy in the Teaching of Jesus (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979)Google Scholar; Hooft, William Visser't, The Fatherhood of God in an Age of Emancipation (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1982)Google Scholar; or the Concilium volume, Metz, Johannes Baptist and Schillebeeckx, Edward, eds., God as Father? (New York: Seabury, 1981).Google Scholar The cutting edge of the debate is to be found, however, in feminist theological writing, e.g., several of the essays in Christ, Carol and Plaskow, Judith, eds., Womanspirit Rising (New York: Harper & Row, 1979)Google Scholar or Ruether, Rosemary, New Woman, New Earth (New York: Seabury, 1978).Google Scholar

Questions about Jesus as appropriate savior figure for women surfaced slightly later, but not in less acute form. “…[A] feminist theologian must question whether the historical man Jesus of Nazareth can be a role model for contemporary women, since feminine psychological liberation means exactly the struggle of women to free themselves from all male internalized norms and models” (Schüssler-Fiorenza, Elisabeth, “Towards a Feminist Biblical Hermeneutic” in Mahan, Brian and Richesin, L. Dale, eds. The Challenge of Liberation Theology [Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1981], pp. 91–112, at 107Google Scholar).

2 See Galvin, John, “The Uniqueness of Jesus and His ‘Abba Experience’ in the Theology of Edward Schillebeeckx,” CTSA Proceedings 35 (1980), 309–14Google Scholar; Schillebeeckx, Edward, Jesus (New York: Seabury, 1979), pp. 256-71, 472–515Google Scholar; Cook, Michael, The Jesus of Faith (New York: Paulist, 1981), pp. 36–51Google Scholar, which links the “Abba experience” with Jesus' awareness of being the eschatological prophet.

3 Schillebeeckx, pp. 268-69, carries the point one step further back, arguing that Jesus' career and teaching is inexplicable with such an experience.

4 See Schillebeeckx, pp. 140-78; Fuller, Reginald, Foundations of New Testament Christology (New York: Scribner's, 1965), pp. 125–31Google Scholar; Jeremias, Joachim, New Testament Theology (New York: Scribner's, 1971)Google Scholar, which focuses on Jesus' prophetic identity and activity.

5 See Lindblom, Johannes, Prophecy in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Blackwell, 1963)Google Scholar which compares and distinguishes the prophetic experience from that of the mystic.

6 For purposes of simplifying the discussion, no account is being taken of the extent to which a distinctive experience of God was present prior to the baptism by John and therefore already shaping Jesus' religious awareness. For one thing, scripture texts give us no guidance in this regard; we can only argue to such experience theologically.

7 Giving any such priority to Jesus' ordinary human learning relative to his Abba-awareness is, of course, artificial. If there was an “Abba experience” of the kind we are suggesting, it provided for Jesus the very root of the process of personal self-identification, and as such it must somehow have been operative from the beginnings of that process.

8 Isaiah 42:1. See Zimmerli, Walter and Jeremias, Joachim, The Servant of God (Naperville, IL: Allenson, 1965).Google Scholar

9 On Jesus' “revolutionary” attitude and behavior towards women, see Swidler, Leonard, Biblical Affirmations of Woman (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1979), pp. 163–290.Google Scholar

10 On the “mission impulse” intrinsic to the prophetic charism, see Lindblom, pp. 182-97.

11 Besides the classic works of Mersch, Emile, The Whole Christ (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1938)Google Scholar and Theology of the Mystical Body (St. Louis: Herder, 1951)Google Scholar, see Wikenhauser, Alfred, Pauline Mysticism (New York: Herder & Herder, 1960)Google Scholar; and The Church as the Body of Christ (edit. Pelton, R.) (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1963).Google Scholar

12 This soteriological shift in model is part of the present re-assessment of “divine providence,” a notion that is obviously linked with any “paternalistic” understanding of God.

13 Considerable work has been done on uncovering the “feminine dimension” of the Bible, especially description of God by use of feminine metaphors. For a listing of such usages, see Swidler. Reinforcing this, studies like those of Brueggeman, Walter, “Israel's Social Criticism and Yahweh's Sexuality,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 45 (1977), Supplement, 739-72Google Scholar; and Trible, Phyllis, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978)Google Scholar have drawn attention to the depatriarchalizing elements already present in the Old Testament traditions.

14 We say “seems to be enshrined …”, because study of early Christian use of “Father” to refer to God indicates that it is the term “Abba,” with the special implications of this term to which we referred earlier, which stands behind this use.

15 So, for example, the doxological introductions of the Pauline letters speak of “praising the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ….”