Did Jesus come to vanquish patriarchy?
on asking the right questions
I have two recent essays out, one at First Things offering a short review of Amy Peeler’s book Women and the Gender of God.
The other is in Christianity Today’s March issue, on why “Does the Church Matter?” is often the wrong question.
What they share in common is the belief that Christians frequently fail to be distinctively Christian in their witness. This, it seems, is a common thread in all of my recent work. It is indeed important to ask questions about power and the right wielding of it. But evangelicals especially have a bad habit of taking their practical questions to the wrong site. To ask a question about the right ordering of human relations, must we look to the Incarnation? For many Christians this move is so obvious as to go unquestioned. But theologians at least should pause. Might we, in asking our questions about gender of the Incarnation, risk minimizing the event itself, making out of it an answer to our concerns and not the metaphysical reshaping of the world, the eschatological reordering, that it is?
Below is the first part of longer essay I am working on on the question of “patriarchy” in the Bible. If you read my First Things piece, you will know that I found Amy Peeler’s book on gender and God to be very misguided. I am personally quite familiar with this question- a good bit of my training was in Feminist theology, and I taught twice a course on Gender and Christianity. I wholeheartedly support women’s ordination and have at times discerned ordination for myself. But my deeper commitment is in training Christians to ask the right questions, and I find that Peeler’s book persistently seeks an answer to the wrong question. Indeed, Peeler often gets the right answer to the questions she’s asking: No, God is not male. No, the Bible does not support a hierarchical patriarchal rule of men over women. Yes, God when becomes flesh he takes male flesh but no, this does not mean that there is a preference for men written in to the Christian story. Yes, when God comes to Mary, Mary is given to the church as a standard of holiness and piety for all to follow.
These answers are all unobjectionable. What I object to is acting as if the question that the Incarnation begs is gender roles, as if the Incarnation was an annunciation about gender and hierarchy. I object, strongly, to the latest current of evangelical books about gender that behave as if the “good news” Christians bear is a revolution in gender roles. It is good that humans on the earth do not wrongly wield power over one another- it is good even that animals live peaceably together (Is 11:6). But what I tire of is the presumption that evidence of animals cohabiting nicely is itself the kingdom. I tire of the assumption that evidence of women in ministry is itself evidence of the right ordering of things- it might be, but it might not be- false teachers come in both genders and women might be doctrinally incorrect as frequently as men.
Indeed, acting as if God’s granting Mary agency is a key takeaway of God-become-flesh turns the supernatural in that act to a quite ordinary exchange of power. And what a loss, what a crass misunderstanding of the event that is at the heart of all Creation! To ask more of this event- to make it speak of consent or power or willing and choosing- is to turn the miraculous into the political. Mary housed the word became flesh. To ask more of her is to receive less.
Gender, if it has any theological meaning, is a signpost and witness of what it means to be holy in the body. I have much more to say about this- but below is a bit of an introduction. Please let me know what you think.
-KS
“and she shall be unclean.”
Patriarchy settled deep into neo-Platonic dualism, nestling firmly in the distinction of matter and form. It has been difficult to unearth it since. The valuation of mind over body and soul over sarx readily became a hierarchy of male over female. The history of philosophy bears this out. When Genevieve Lloyd writes of “the maleness of the Man of Reason”, she is arguing not only that philosophers have been almost entirely male, but that the discipline itself has come to think about Reason as belonging primarily to men.[1]
One could write of all the ways the Hebrew Bible resists such a claim. It’s pages teem and swarm with animals who, in their very naming, are given a place in the creation order. The gecko and rock-badger are “unclean” and so cannot be eaten- though that is not such a terrible fate for an animal. God makes matter matter in calling it good. In making it matter, he makes it ripe for the spirit’s perch. The Spirit alights on matter, without exception. It is to matter that God comes and this is not contaminating to matter- indeed it is the exact intent that God had for the created world! The Good of a creature is to have this close relationship with God- as Kathryn Tanner says, “the closer the better!”
So the Levitical designation of “clean” and “unclean” is a ritual and not a moral designation, as if rock-badgers were worse than lambs. These chapters are often taken as a second creation account, as if they overturned the “very good” of Genesis by dividing matter into “good” and “bad.” Pure and impure are ritual and not ethical and moral designations- the pig is no less a creation of God than the lamb.
Ritual purity concerned which animals were to be sacrificed and which gender of persons could participate in the Levitical system. So women when menstruating or after childbirth were to remain apart from consecrated things. Robert Alter and Jacob Milgrom both emphasize that this rule is a recognition of the potential life that a woman of childbearing age bears, and passes from her body, in the process of menstruation. The blood of a menstrual cycle designates a life that wasn’t, as every woman trying to conceive realizes. A designation that bleeding women must “avoid contact with consecrated things” is simply an echo of what is being spoken by her body- life, which might have been, will not be. The life which might have been consecrated has passed. The contact which she is prohibited is no penalty, because she has already housed, for a period of days, its potential in her own body.
The first half of the book of Exodus recounts God’s miraculous acts- Moses, Israel’s deliverer, is found in a basket. God appears in a burning bush. Moses and Aaron go to Pharoah for the famous “Let my People GO!” exchange. The plagues ensue, the Israelites flee through a wall of water with chariots behind, God appears at Sinai. Then, in the second half of the book, we are bored to tears with minute requirements for the construction of the tabernacle.
But no, this is not the way to read Exodus, not at all! What the second half recounts is the means of God’s presence to Israel, just as in the first half of the book. But in the tabernacle, God is present in miniature, electing to be borne by Israel and remain within the camp. God is housed by Israel, dwelling among them. The careful and elaborate designations for the construction of such a vessel reflect the meticulous and gentle care due to such a dwelling. Indeed, the tabernacle becomes a womb. In their strict observance of the tabernacle’s order, the Levites preserve the conditions for the holiness that dwells within. But all of the administration and architecture and ordinances and regulation and daily maintenance preserve the holiness of the space where the divine presence will dwell.
This very same holiness will one day dwell in Mary’s womb by fiat. Women want the Levitical priesthood to the extent that they misunderstand that it is always already theirs, in metaphor. Just as the Levitical priests ensured that the tabernacle remained in order, and today’s pastors ensure that word and sacrament are offered in an orderly fashion, women in their very being provide the grounds for new life. All life might be consecrated before God, and so female flesh guards and provides the means for such consecration, in its very essence.[2]
Mary did not need to be a priest because she herself became the tabernacle, in flesh. To ask more of her is to receive less.
[1] Genevieve Lloyd. The Man of Reason: “Male” and “Female” in Western Philosophy. 1984.
[2] This is at least one reason I reject all discussion of “gender roles”- because gender is much deeper than that, rooted in essences and symbol systems and not roles or functions.
"Women want the Levitical priesthood to the extent that they misunderstand that it is always already theirs, in metaphor." So good!
yes, the import of Mary's consent is pretty deep in the tradition. Do you think, say, Aquinas, is misguided here? Or Luther?