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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 September 2014
While awareness of feminist issues has not left its mark on all professors of theology, much less on all who teach christology, those whose awareness has been changed by facing these issues often find themselves asking how they can bring them to bear on courses with already substantial content. The point of raising feminist issues, however, is not a matter of adding content but of uncovering questions that have not been asked and of transforming the way we look at key areas of the discipline. This is turn leads to the discovery of new resources and new insights.
My own approach in teaching “Christ in Tradition and Culture” to undergraduates has been to uncover feminist issues and concerns that are in the mainstream of christology. I have done this by looking at scriptural, theological, and soteriological/spiritual perspectives that are central to the development of a contemporary christology. The purpose of this article is to share the ways I deal with feminist issues within the perspectives noted and to indicate some of the more important bibliographic resources that address them. Before examining issues that surface in the various perspectives, it may be helpful to underscore some aspects of feminist theology that should be kept in mind.
1 An important review of literature, though it now requires amplification, is Christ, Carol P., “The New Feminist Theology: A Review of the Literature,” Religious Studies Review 3/4 (October 1977), 203–12.Google Scholar Christ discusses some fundamental differences between reformists and revolutionaries. A recent work that examines issues and resources in a number of areas is Ruether, Rosemary, Womanguides: Readings Toward a Feminist Theology (Boston: Beacon, 1985).Google Scholar
2 A feminist approach to the Bible is not as recent as it might appear. The first milestone in this area came when Elizabeth Cady Stanton proposed that religion had contributed to the subordination of women and would continue to do so unless its traditional sources were purified of patriarchal biases. Her reinterpretation, The Women's Bible, originally published in two volumes in 1895 and 1898 (New York: Arno Press, 1972)Google Scholar, did not meet with much success because of the radicalness of her approach at the time.
3 Two useful works for general background on the role of women in gnosticism are Pagels, Elaine, The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Random House, 1979), pp. 48–69Google Scholar, and Perkins, Pheme, The Gnostic Diaiogue (New York: Paulist, 1980), pp. 133–41.Google Scholar
4 This matter has been effectively treated by Plaskow, Judith, “Christian Feminism and Anti-Judaism,” Cross Currents 28 (1978), 306–09.Google Scholar
5 I note Wilson-Kastner's work as the most significant systematic work because Ruether's, RosemarySexism and God-Talk: Toward A Feminist Theology (Boston: Beacon, 1983)Google Scholar examines Christian theology in general, not just christology, and her To Change the World: Christology and Cultural Criticism (New York: Crossroad, 1981) focuses more on ethical than systematic issues.Google Scholar
6 In this article I have not taken up the methodological and philosophical differences between feminist theologians, such as those for example between Rosemary Ruether and Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza. Though two women may assert a male savior can save women, they may do so for different reasons. Since the primary purpose of this article is to put basic feminist issues into a christology course the pursuit of more technical questions will have to be taken up elsewhere.