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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2024
The doctrine of Christ should be the most comprehensive way that Christians express their belief in redemption from all sin and evil in human life, the doctrine that embraces the authentic humanity and fulfilled hopes of all persons. The theological categories adopted by early Christianity to define the doctrine of Christ—early Christology, in other words—would seem to be inclusive of women. And yet, of all Christian doctrine, it has been the doctrine of Christ that has been most frequently used to exclude women from full participation in the Christian Church. How is this possible?
Early Christianity used the word ‘logos’ to define that presence of God which has become incarnate in Jesus Christ. This term drew on a long tradition of religious philosophy. In Greek and Hellenistic Jewish philosophy, the divine Logos was the means by which the transcendent God came forth in the beginning to create the world. The Logos was simultaneously the immanence of God and the ground of creation. Through the Logos God created the world, guided it, was revealed to it and reconciled the world to God.
The Logos was particularly related to the rational principle in each human soul. By linking the term Christ, the Messiah, through which God redeemed the world, to the Logos, early Christianity prevented a split between creation and redemption threatened by early gnosticism. The God revealed in Christ was the same God who created the world in the beginning, the authentic ground of creation manifest in fulfilled form over against the alienation of creation from its true being.
1 For the development of Logos Christology in the New Testament, particularly the gospel of John, see Dodd, C.H., The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel, Cambridge & New York: Cambridge U.P., 1963, pp. 263–285Google Scholar. For Logos Christianity in second century Christianity, especially the theology of Justin Martyr, see Goodenough, Erwin, The Theology of Justin Martyr, Amsterdam: Philo Press, 1968, pp. 139–175Google Scholar.
2 Bird, Phyllis, ‘Male and Female He Created Them: Gen. 1:27b in the Context of the Priestly Account of Creation’, Harvard Theological Review 74:2 (1981), pp. 129–159CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 Gregory Nyssa, De Opif, Hom. 16.7; see Rosemary Radford Ruether, ‘Misogynism and Virginal Feminism in the Fathers of the Church’, in R. Ruether, ed., Religion and Sexism: Images of Women in the Jewish and Christian Traditions, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974, pp. 153–155.
4 Børresen, Kari, ‘God's Image: Man's Image; Female Metaphors Describing God in the Christian Tradition’, Temenos 19, Helsinki, 1983, pp. 17–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
5 Augustine, De Trinitate 7.7.10.
6 Aristotle, Gen An. 729b. 737–738.
7 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, pt. 1, q. 92, art. 1.
8 This is the view taken by post‐Christian feminists such as Goldenberg, Naomi, The Changing of the Gods. Boston: Beacon, 1979Google Scholar.
9 For example, Is. 42:13, 14 and Is. 49: 14:15. See Swidler, Leonard, Biblical Affirmations of Women. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1979, pp. 21–50Google Scholar.
10 Swidler, ibid. pp. 36–48.
11 Luke 11:49, Matt. 11:18–19: See James M. Robinson, ‘Jesus as Sophos and Sophia: Wisdom and Tradition in the Gospels’, and Fiorenza, Elisabeth Schüssler, ‘Wisdom Mythology and the Christological Hymns of the New Testament’, in Wilkin, Robert L., ed., Aspects of Wisdom in Judaism and Early Christianity, South Bend, Indiana: Notre Dame U.P., 1975, pp. 35ffGoogle Scholar.
12 See entry on ‘Son of Man’ in An Inclusive Language Lectionary: Readings for Year A, by the Inclusive Language Lectionary Committee, appointed by the Division of Education and Ministry, National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1983, appendix.
13 Luke 1:46–55.
14 Matt. 27:56; Mark 15:40; Lk. 23:49, John 19:25. John alone has the tradition of the mother of Jesus at the cross, as well as the disciple John, but he too affirms the presence of Mary Magdalene there. In the resurrection traditions, Matthew says that the angel told the women to announce it to the disciples. Luke says only that they told it to the ‘eleven and to all the others’, and Mark says that they told no one of their experience. John has the most extended account of Mary Magdalene's presence, saying that first she told Peter and John of the empty tomb and then later she spoke to the risen Lord and was told by him to impart her revelation to the brethren: Matt. 28:1–8; Mark 16:1–8; Lk. 24:1–9; John 20:1–18. The gnostics elaborated the gospel stories of Mary Magdalene's role in the resurrection, and made her a key figure in interpreting the message of the resurrection to the male apostles. For the gnostics, this also affirms women's place in apostolic ministry and teaching. See the Gospel of Mary, in the Nag Hammadi Library in English, Robinson, John et al, San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1977, pp. 471–474Google Scholar.
15 See Schillebeeckx, Edward, Jesus, an Experiment in Christology, New York: Seabury, 1979, p. 703Google Scholar, ns. 31–33.
16 Joel 2: 28–32: Acts 2: 17–21.
17 See Fiorenza, Elizabeth Schüssler, “Word, Spirit and Power: Women in Early Christian Communities”, Women of Spirit: Female Leadership in the Jewish and Christian Traditions, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979, pp. 39–44Google Scholar.
18 Didache 11:3–13:7.
19 I Cor. 7:25–31.
20 I Tim. 3: 1–12.
21 See MacDonald, Denis R., The Legend and the Apostle: The Battle for Paul in Story and Canon, Philadelphia: Westminster, 1983Google Scholar, who argues that I Timothy was written by a second generation Christian representing a patriarchal view of Paul, to combat an alternative view of Paul found in the oral traditions of the story of Paul and Thecla.
22 The Montanist women prophets were accused of abandoning their husbands, which suggests that they shared the view of the Acts of Paul and Thecla that women converts to Christ transcend their marital obligations. Gnostic women also believed that spiritual rebirth transcended marriage and procreation in a new state of androgynous existence. Both groups supported women in leadership, following the early Christian traditions of a leadership of apostle, prophets and teachers. See Fiorenza, ‘Word, Spirit and Power’, op. cit., p. 42, and Pagels, Elaine, The Gnostic Gospels, New York: Random House, 1979, pp. 48–69Google Scholar.
23 It became formulaic for the fourth century advocates of asceticism, such as St. Jerome and St. Athanasius, to affirm the three levels of blessings on states of life: thirty fold for marriage, sixty fold for continent widowhood and one hundred fold for virginity, in order to both affirm the superiority of chastity to marriage and yet also separate themselves from groups that forbade marriage altogether to the baptized. See Athanasius, Ep. 48 and Jerome, Ep. 48.2.
24 Laeuchli, Sammuel, Power and Sexuality: The Emergence of Canon Law at the Council of Elvira, Philadelphia: Temple U.P., 1972Google Scholar. The Council of Elvira in 400 A.D. was the first to mandate continence for the clergy, and shows the emerging connection between clerical celibacy and an obsession with control over female sexuality.
25 See Ruether, Rosemary, ‘Women in Utopian Movements’ in Ruether, R.R. and Keller, R.S., Women and Religion in America: The Nineteenth Century, New York: Harper and Row, 1981, pp. 46–100Google Scholar.
26 Eusebius, Oration on Constantine, 10.7.
27 The fullest development of the union of mystical and millennialist theology, together with the affirmation of sexual equality, is found in the theology of the Anglo‐American sect, the Shakers, or the United Society of Christ's Second Appearing. See especially their Bible, The Testimony of Christ's Second Appearing, United Society: 1856.
28 On the Leveller party in the Puritan Civil War, see especially Haller, William, Liberty and Reformation in the Puritan Revolution. New York: Columbia U.P., 1955, pp. 254–358Google Scholar; also Hill, Christopher, The World Turned Upside Down: radical ideas during the English Revolution, London: Temple Smith, 1972.Google Scholar
29 A secularised millennialism is typical of much of Enlightenment writing. See, for example, Antoine‐Nicolas de Condorcet, Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind (Barraclough, June, trans.), London: George Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1955Google Scholar.
30 Acts of the Martyrs of Lyons and Vienne, in Musurillo, Herbert, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, Oxford: Clarendon, 1972, p. 75Google Scholar.
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