Global Egalitarianism

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riscilla

The academic journal of

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apers Vol 35, No 1 | Winter 2021

CBE International

Global Egalitarianism

3 YHWH and Marginalization: Israel’s Widows and Abuelita Theology Katrina Armas

9 Ties that Bind Women in Islam and Christianity

Kristin Lassen

15 Ordained Women in the Church

Christine Marchetti

19 Also a Mother: Asian Feminist Theology Promotes God Also as Mother Kay Bonikowsky 26 Book Review Rediscovering the Marys: Maria, Mariamne, Miriam,

by Mary Ann Beavis and Ally Kateusz Reviewed by Elizabeth Ann R. Willett

29 Racism, Revolution, and Redemption: Let’s Not Do 2020 Again

Daniel Fan

Priscilla and Aquila instructed Apollos more perfectly in the way of the Lord. (Acts 18:26)

I Tertius . . .

“International.” It’s the final word of “Christians for Biblical Equality International.” It’s in our web address. It’s in our logo. It’s on the front and back covers, in the masthead, and on literally every page of Priscilla Papers.

Though no single organization can tackle injustice toward women everywhere in the world, CBE International nevertheless takes seriously the global task of promoting egalitarianism. CBE International works side by side with Christians all around the world. CBE International has, for example, held conferences in Australia, Canada, Colombia, England, Finland, India, Kenya, South Africa, and the United States. The next conference, in August 2021, will be in England at the London School of Theology.

Another example of CBE International’s global work is President Mimi Haddad’s tireless commitment to establishing international relationships. Through her work—traveling, lecturing, preaching, consulting, encouraging, praying—CBE International has been involved with organizations and events such as G.L.O.B.A.L. Justice, Churches for Middle East Peace, the World Evangelical Alliance’s “Global Consultation for Women in International Christian Leadership” in the Netherlands, the Shaq’ eq Network in Egypt, World Vision’s “International Women’s Day Celebration,” Women’s Leadership Development in Cambodia, and the Ekklesia Foundation for Gender Education in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda.

CBE International has chapters in Australia (Melbourne, Perth, and Sydney) and enjoys official relationships with the Atlantic Society for Biblical Equality (Nova Scotia, Canada), RaTas – Kristillisen tasa-arvon poulesta ry (RaTas – Christians

for Equality, Finland), the Institute for Faith and Gender Empowerment (Kenya), and CBE South Africa.

This issue of Priscilla Papers continues CBE International’s global reach. The opening article, by Katrina “Kat” Armas, describes abuelita theology. With roots in mujerista theology, abuelita theology ponders whether the greatest theologians are those whom the world would not consider theologians at all— namely, widows and grandmothers. Next, Kristin Lassen seeks to promote respect and dialogue by unveiling “Ties the Bind Women in Islam and Christianity.” The third article, by Christine Marchetti, surveys women’s ordination in the Eastern and Western church from the second through the eleventh centuries. Christine wants women who aspire to ordained ministry today to be encouraged by the rich history of women’s ordination. In the final article, Kay Bonikowsky explains how Asian feminist theology is open to viewing God not only as Father: “Asian feminist theologians have no qualms about a theology of the womb, which explores and celebrates our intimate relationship with God as also Mother.”

After these four articles, Elizabeth “Libby” Willett reviews the book, Rediscovering the Marys: Maria, Mariamne, Miriam, edited

by Mary Ann Beavis and Ally Kateusz (T&T Clark, 2020). Libby trains and consults for mother-tongue Bible translators in Latin America. Our final piece in this issue is unique. It is an open letter from long-time friend of CBE International, Daniel Fan. Daniel makes a persuasive case for relationships and redemption as keys to overcoming racism.

I end my editorial as Kristin Lassen ends her article— with Psalm 34:3, placing emphasis on the last word, together: “O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together” (NRSV).

. . . greet you in the Lord.

DISCLAIMER: Final selection of all material published by CBE International in Priscilla Papers is entirely up to the discretion of the publisher, editor, and peer reviewers.

Please note that each author is solely legally responsible for the content and the accuracy of facts, citations, references, and quotations rendered and properly attributed in the article appearing under his or her name. Neither CBE, nor the editor, nor the editorial team is responsible or legally liable for any content or any statements made by any author, but the legal responsibility is solely that author’s once an article appears in print in Priscilla Papers.

Editor: Jeff Miller Associate Editor / Graphic Designer: Theresa Garbe President / Publisher: Mimi Haddad President Emerita: Catherine Clark Kroeger† Consulting Editor: William David Spencer Peer Review Team: Katrina Armas, Joshua Barron, Lynn H. Cohick, Havilah Dharamraj, Tim Foster, Nijay Gupta, Susan Howell, Jamin Hübner, Loretta Hunnicutt, Kyong-Jin Lee, Esau McCaulley, Adam Omelianchuk, Chuck Pitts, Marion Taylor, Karen Strand Winslow On the Cover: Earth seen from Apollo 17, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons Priscilla Papers is indexed in the ATLA Religion Database® (ATLA RDB®), http://www.atla.com, in the Christian Periodical Index (CPI), in New Testament Abstracts (NTA), and in Religious and Theological Abstracts (R&TA), as well as by CBE itself. Priscilla Papers is licensed with EBSCO’s fulltext informational library products. Full-text collections of Priscilla Papers are available through EBSCO Host’s Religion and Philosophy Collection, Galaxie Software’s Theological Journals collection, and Logos Bible Software. Priscilla Papers is a member publication of the American Association of Publishers.

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Priscilla Papers (issn 0898–753x) is published quarterly by CBE International 122 W Franklin Avenue, Suite 218, Minneapolis, MN 55404–2451 www.cbeinternational.org | 612–872–6898 © CBE International, 2021.

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YHWH and Marginalization: Israel’s Widows and Abuelita Theology Katrina Armas

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the Lorberbaum argues that the theological message underlying the United Nations General Assembly in 1948. The idea of human first chapters of Genesis is that humanity is created or born in the rights—fundamental rights for each human irrespective of his image of the divine king (read with the backdrop of royal theology prevalent in the ancient Near East). Different interpretations or her gender, social status, or origin1—is a characteristic of our offer a range of meaning for what it means to be made in God’s modern world and a fruit of the Enlightenment. However, many image. For example, one understanding is that God created for scholars believe that the tradition-historical root of human himself an image to serve as an extension of himself on earth. rights is the Hebrew Bible, as its ideas of social justice remained Other interpretations assume there is “a divine spark” in human subversively effective, impacting modern views of social justice.2 beings that establishes humanity and grants humans unique The theology of the book of Deuteronomy and the anthropology status among God’s creation. This view assumes that the divine of the creation traditions of the Hebrew Bible had a deep impact image is the basis for the equality in principle among human on the formation of the modern world, particularly as it pertains beings, for all are in the image of the Creator.4 to justice for the marginalized in society.

Going further, some have likened human dignity to When it comes to human rights, ancient Israel was the imago Trinitatis, drawing out the relational dynamics commanded by YHWH to protect and honor the dignity of one of equality, mutuality, and reciprocity. of society’s most vulnerable groups: widows.

Today, Christian theology still expects care Where the imago Dei is Catherine La Cugna argues that this characterizes the intra-relationality of the for the “least of these” (recall Matt 25:40), particularly those who may not seem to degraded or humiliated in persons of the Trinity.5 Dignity of human have anything to contribute to society. This one of us, so it is for all of us. persons is to be understood in relationality.

As James Hanvey argues, dignity has a social not only has physical implications, but dimension: “in some way our dignity, qua Christians are left to wonder about honoring our person and identity not just our status, is held in and by the the vulnerable theologically. What role do the vulnerable play ‘we’ of our relationships. In terms of theology, we encounter here in shaping theological understandings? Modern theologies, the reality of solidarity which has both natural and supernatural including womanist and mujerista theologies, have attempted dimensions.”6 The natural dimension that Hanvey refers to to answer these questions. is the moral obligation we owe every person by virtue of our In our modern contexts, poor, marginalized women or the common humanity. abuelitas (grandmothers) in our midst are often overlooked for In On Human Dignity, Jürgen Moltmann encapsulates this many of the same reasons widows were overlooked in the ancient idea of human dignity and common humanity, particularly world. These factors include age, physical vulnerability, social the struggle between having dignity and actualizing it—the status, and gender. However, these abuelitas have historically foundation for abuelita theology. Moltmann argues that, served as unofficial theologians and backbones of the faith. This article will introduce and expand on a lesser-known theological Human dignity lies in the fact that each particular concept, namely, abuelita theology. It will argue that YHWH’s human being and all human beings are, in common, instructions concerning widows in the Hebrew Bible are human . . . this presupposes the difference between foundational to understanding abuelita theology as a theology the existence and the essence of the human being: that upholds the dignity of marginalized women.

The human being is a human being, and ought to be a

The Basis for Human Rights and Dignity

When considering the dignity of humans, it is important to begin at the beginning, as the creation narrative sets a basis for how all persons—even those who do not seem to have anything to contribute to society—are to be understood. Much like the widow in ancient Israel, abuelitas often fall into a similar, marginalized category, as they are physically vulnerable and unable to provide for themselves. However, how does the imago Dei speak into the dignity of persons?

Yair Lorberbaum explains that the concept of human dignity and the sanctity of human life is historically bound up with the biblical idea of humankind created in the divine image.3 Similarly,

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human being. The being-a-human contains his or her humanity initially only as possibility, but not yet as constant reality.7

He then explains what happens when the hominitas (being human purely in the sense of belonging to the zoological species) and the humanitas (human nature, civilization, and kindness) are at odds, putting the humanitas at risk: It can be actualized, but it can also be blocked. So the dignity of human beings consists in this, that they are human and should be human. Their existence is gift and task simultaneously. It presents them with the

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task of actualizing themselves, their essence, and thus coming into their truth.8 In our human likeness, it is essential to understand that where the imago Dei is degraded or humiliated in one of us, so it is for all of us.9 This is important to consider as it pertains to the most marginalized or vulnerable in society—including abuelitas, many of whom find themselves, like the widow in ancient Israel, without physical or financial support. The following sections will highlight the biblical case for widows and how it serves as a basis for understanding modern abuelita theology, a theology that presents marginalized women with the task of actualizing their dignity and essence, thus “coming into their truth.”

Family Structure in Ancient Israel

monarchic times her presence among Abraham’s descendants has been cited in the Hebrew Scriptures.”14 Losing protection of a male further marginalized a woman in society, making her part of the needy class.15 This is specifically apparent through the laws found addressing the widow, orphan, and stranger, three groups of people devoid of the economic support provided by the privileged Israelite male.16 The laws in Deut 14:22–29, 26:12– 15, and 24:17–22 were put in place to eliminate the economic hardships of these groups of people who would otherwise have found themselves destitute in society. Similarly, as it pertains to the widow, the law presumed that she would be supported by her sons in the case of her husband’s death. If there were no sons available to provide for her, then the law of levirate marriage would apply.17 However, as Eryle Davies explains, “the pleas of the prophets on behalf of the widow are due to the fact that one of the most basic provisions legislating for her support [was] often, in practice, neglected.”18

In order to better understand the plight of the widow in the Hebrew Scriptures, it is important to first understand how familial society in ancient Israel worked. While modern, Western culture echoes a similar importance of family, the “family unit” Widowhood in Ancient Society and Hebrew Scripture in ancient Israelite society played a unique role in how society The protection of the widow, the orphan, and the poor was functioned, comprising a central aspect of Israelite culture. the common policy of the ancient Near East, although both in Family profiles differed among three differently sized groups. ancient Near Eastern literature in general and in ancient Jewish According to Bunie Veeder, there is general agreement that the literature in particular, widows were not a prominent or even ancestral house was the central unit in a relationship diagram, a well-defined group. Similarly, the plight of widows was not comprising three generations or more.10 The next group was the exactly the same everywhere.19 Nonetheless, protection for the clan, a kinship group composed of many households residing widow, orphan, and poor was a policy of virtue of gods, kings, in close proximity. Lastly, the tribe, which was comprised of and judges that proved the piety of a ruler. Great Mesopotamian many clans.11 An individual’s identity came from this threekings like Urukagina, Ur-Nammu, ring structure, with the household being the strongest connection, moving outward There is great concern for the and Hammurabi boasted in their legal inscriptions that they had accomplished to the clan and the tribe.12 According to just treatment of the widow the principle of taking care of such needy Num 36:6–9, women were required to persons.20 Keith Wessel points out that their marry within a clan of their father’s tribe in in the Hebrew Scriptures. boasting appears to have had primarily an order to keep the holdings within the tribal economic focus, “set as it is in the immediate boundaries. When married, women moved context of various initiatives to insure fairness and safety in to their husband’s household. commercial ventures.”21 Another factor to take into consideration is generational Charles Fensham argues that the attitude taken against the identity in the Israelite family. One can find laws requiring widow, the orphan, and the poor is to be considered from a legal respect for both one’s mother and father (e.g., Exod 21:15–17; Deut background. Because they had no rights or legal personalities, 21:15–17, 18–21, 22:13–21, 23:1). Similarly, mothers were expected they were “almost outlaws,” as anyone could oppress them without to be active participants in the legal procedures outlined in the the risk that legal connections might endanger their position.

Deuteronomic Law, as seen in both the requirements for the Fensham demonstrates that, in order to restore the balance of parents of the accused bride in Deut 22:13–21 and the parents of society, widows (and other needy people) had to be protected, the rebellious son in Deut 21:18–21. Nonetheless, the mother and making it necessary to sanction their protection by direct father did not typically have equal authority in these household command of a god and to make it a virtue of the kings.22 He also matters. Danna Fewell and David Gunn suggest that, although states that the Israelites in later history inherited the concept from the mother had some authority within the family hierarchy, their forebears, some of whom had come from Mesopotamia, systemic power resided with the father.13 Egypt, or Canaan. “In the Israelite community this policy was Class differences proved to be an important factor in Israelite extended through the encouragement of the high ethical religion society. Women were usually protected by the male household of YHWH to become a definite part of their religion.”23 head and transitioned through secure categories from daughter, There is great concern for the just treatment of the widow in to wife, to mother. However, some wives or mothers lost the the Hebrew Scriptures. In biblical Israel the government of sacred economic support of a privileged Israelite male (this included law required the public to become generally responsible for the husband and even sons). Thus, it was not uncommon that a welfare of the marginalized. This is seen in the abundance of laws widow was associated with a family entity. “From patriarchal to 4 • Priscilla Papers

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that placed a duty on every Israelite to care for the fatherless, the widow, the stranger, and the disadvantaged members of society in their midst.24 It begins with YHWH’s instructions in the wilderness (Exod 22:20–23), where widows are mentioned for special consideration as vulnerable members of society, often living at the mercy of others. In this passage, YHWH defends the widow against any ill treatment and warns perpetrators of possible dire consequences for those who might harm her. “Because newly freed Israelites travelling in the wilderness presumably lacked courts, hearing her cry (and theirs) God Himself would become the judge to pass sentence.”25 God champions the cause of the downtrodden when there is an absence of a human protector or a human judicial system to carry out justice.

Next, the plight of the widow is repeated in Moses’s final instructions (Deut 10:17–18, 27:19). Wessel argues that the book of Deuteronomy seems particularly concerned with the vulnerability of widows because there may have already been a large number of them in the camp of Israel at the time of the giving of the “second law” for a new generation of Israelites, shortly before their entrance into the promised land.26 Moses’s final instruction in Deut 10:16–18 is the focus of this article. This passage states, So circumcise your hearts and stop being so stubborn, because the Lord your God is the God of all gods and Lord of all lords, the great, mighty, and awesome God who doesn’t play favorites and doesn’t take bribes. He enacts justice for orphans and widows, and he loves immigrants, giving them food and clothing. (CEB) Walter Brueggemann argues that, in this text, the ritual practice of circumcision is transformed into a metaphor for intense loyalty to YHWH. Like the cutting away of the foreskin serves to make the organ more sensitive and responsive,27 so it is for the heart, making it more sensitive and responsive not only to YHWH, but to the vulnerable in society. Israel should be intentionally responsive to YHWH because of who YHWH is, one who reigns over all “gods,” lords, and powers of various kinds. The text describes this awesome, great, and mighty God as one who is “concretely and effectively involved in the affairs of the earth as advocate and protector of the vulnerable; one who cares about the specificities of justice and the victims of injustice.”28 This is a God who cannot be bribed by the wealthy and powerful but who attends to the necessities and desires of those in need, including widows. He is one who cares about the tangible execution of justice that has to do with fundamental necessities including food and clothing. Moses’s call for sensitive and intentional obedience is grounded in the assertion that the Most High God of heaven is completely engaged in the lowly and earthly work of justice. “Israel is permitted no escapist religion but is drawn into the exigencies of earthly justice, where YHWH’s own sovereignty has been most fully engaged.”29 Widow as Almanah In order to fully grasp YHWH’s intent for this “earthly justice” for widows, it is important to understand the nuances encircling

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the term “widow” in the Hebrew Scriptures. The word translated “widow” is the Hebrew word almanah. References to widows in the Hebrew Scriptures can be seen in two different forms.

Sometimes the widow is referred to alone, and other times she is cited as part of a group. An understanding of the biblical almanah can be gained more fully by examining the terminology surrounding her and the characteristics that describe her.

First, an almanah is most literally a woman who has lost her husband. However, there is nuance for how this word is understood against a biblical backdrop. For example, Chayim Cohen explains that almanah is a “once married woman who has no means of financial support and is therefore in need of special legal protection.”30 Harry Hoffner states that “the word almanah has a completely negative nuance. It means a woman who has been divested of her male protector (husband, sons, often also brothers).”31 As one without agency because of her loss of living relatives and money, and as one without influence, the widow is frequently associated with the stranger and the orphan. Seeking to capture a full import of the Hebrew word, another scholar has related almanah to “being silent,” because once her marital identification is broken she becomes a silent person without voice in the community’s legal or economic affairs.32 Because marriage in ancient Israel was framed as a union of two families, a widow remained attached to her deceased husband’s family even as both groups maintained their rights and obligations.33 However, if there was no existing male from that union to sustain her interests, then the woman became responsible for herself and free of male authority. Similarly, Paula Hiebert contends that a woman who lacked possibility of remarriage (typically a levirate marriage found in Deut 25:5–10) and who lacked a son to provide for her, was bereft of support. Naomi Steinberg addresses the economic implications that would ensue given the aforementioned circumstance. She explains that, “understanding widowhood in biblical Israel revolves around the existence or absence of ancestral land in the estate of the deceased husband.”34 Wessel argues that the tone in the Israelite legislation concerning widows in the OT (particularly in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy) is markedly different from the other ancient Near Eastern texts. “Different from the other Near East law codes, in the Old Testament there is an attitude—a motivation— that the Lord wishes to see in his chosen people as they fulfill the requirements of his law.”35 He claims that there is an attitude of hope in which widows are valued members of society. This can be seen in narratives like 1 Kings, where it is recorded that God extended his providence to Gentile widows, or those outside of Israel. In turn, ancient Israel was to form how they deal with the less fortunate with attitudes and actions indicative of how YHWH dealt with them. “In short, since unfortunate persons were considered valuable to God, they were likewise to be considered valuable members of the Israelite community as well.”36 Justice for All People Thus, these Israelite principles intended to nurture an attitude among the population that the widows in their midst were

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valued members of the community. In most general terms, the major concern that can be found in the law code is that the marginalized not be deprived of justice. Thus, Deut 24:17 commands that the foreigner or the orphan not be deprived of justice, or not to “take the cloak of a widow as a pledge.” This was intended to command the Israelite men in patriarchal positions of leadership to not give in to the temptations to abuse their authority and, “in shameless self-interest, take advantage of those dependent upon the mercy of others.”37 This responsibility of the leadership is vividly emphasized at the closing of the Pentateuch, where YHWH threatens a curse for those who disobey. Abusing authority and wielding power over the vulnerable in society is akin to forgetting Israel’s plight and bondage in Egypt and consequently, forgetting YHWH’s mercy in rescuing Israel. Instead, the Israelites were commanded to constantly remind themselves “they were descendants of a patriarch whose family went from humble beginnings to being a great nation, but only by the Lord’s mercy.”38 Israel was not to bask in their favored position, but to be a light for the rest of the world. With this humble understanding of their standing before God, the Israelites were to show special concern for those in need of mercy and kindness: the widow, the orphan, the poor, the foreigner.39 One way that this kindness was to be shown was through the triennial tithe in Deut 14:28–29. In this passage, Israel is instructed to offer the third year’s produce, given specifically so that “the immigrants, orphans, and widows who live in your cities, will come and feast until they are full. Do this so that the Lord your God might bless you in everything you do” (Deut 14:29 CEB). Later, in ch. 24 of Deuteronomy, they are directed to leave some grain in the field so that the immigrant, the orphan, and the widow could have some means of support by gleaning from the remains left behind by the harvesters.

Not only were the marginalized in society said to be dear to YHWH’s heart, but he regarded them as equals to all other peoples of Israel. Deuteronomy emphasizes this not only in the aforementioned commands, but in the instructions given for national worship during the three major festivals of the religious calendar: Passover, Pentecost, and the Feast of Booths or Tabernacles.40 During these times, all of Israel gathered together not only to recognize YHWH’s goodness, but also to acknowledge his sovereignty over them. Deuteronomy 16:11 states that every single Israelite was to rejoice before God at the place of God’s choosing, “you, your sons, your daughters, your male and female servants, the Levites who live in your cities, the immigrants, the orphans, and the widows who are among you” (CEB). Thus, the Jewish festivals were established as specific times to reiterate a truth that the entire Torah frequently emphasized, namely, that all persons were of equal worth and status before God.41 “While legislation affecting her is imbued with YHWH’s oversight, the rules about her care, quite interestingly, involve the entire population in something of an early social legislation for vulnerable people.”42 Treating the widow justly, for YHWH, was a communal task which alludes to Hanvey’s articulation 6 • Priscilla Papers

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that where the imago Dei is degraded or humiliated in one person, so it is for all persons.43

Old Testament Widows and Abuelita Theology The way that YHWH cares—and consequently calls his people to care—about the downtrodden, and particularly the widow, is foundational to how modern-day Christians are to understand and live out abuelita theology, a theology centered on the grandmothers in our midst. The following section will explain what abuelita theology is and how it finds its roots in mujerista theology.

Mujerista Theology First, mujerista theology is a reflective action that has its goal in liberation.44 It was coined by Cuban native, Ada Maria IsasiDiaz, after serving as a missionary to Peru for three years.

During her time there, Isasi-Diaz realized that not only is liberation necessary for justice and peace, but that one cannot be liberated at the expense of another or isolated from others.45 Thus, mujerista theology should not be understood as a theology exclusively for Latinas, but a theology from the perspective of Latinas.46 It is a process of empowerment for marginalized women that begins with the development of a strong sense of moral agency. It then works on clarifying the importance and value of who these women are, what they think, and what they do. This process enables them to understand oppressive structures that determine their daily lives, and to understand that the goal of their struggle should not be to participate in and to benefit from these structures, but to work toward changing them radically.47 The goals of mujerista theology are to provide a platform for the voices of Latina grassroots women, to develop a theological method that takes seriously the religious understandings and practices of Latinas as a source for theology, and to challenge theological understandings, church teachings, and religious practices that oppress Latina (and all) women.48 It does not insist that liberation is something one person can give another, but instead it is a process in which the oppressed become protagonists—or protagonistas—of their own stories. As Moltmann argues, the dignity of humans consists in humans being human. This involves their existence, humanity, and essence being actualized and thus, “coming into their truth.”49 Abuelitas as Theologians Similar to that of the widow in ancient Israel, abuelitas in our society often find themselves in a marginalized state, as they are physically vulnerable and unable to provide for themselves. One characteristic that is shared among abuelitas is the fact that many of them are immigrants—a vulnerable group similar to that of the ancient world. This puts abuelitas in multiple marginalized positions which includes their age (physical vulnerabilities), social status (poor, immigrant), and gender. Because of this, they are often overlooked, their stories remain untold, and they are not valued as genuine theologians.

Like mujerista theology, the aim of abuelita theology is to give these abuelitas a voice in which they become protagonistas

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way of humans knowing about God.55 Abuelitas transmit what of their own stories and participants in creating a different Jeanette Rodriquez calls “cultural memory,” a way that lowerreality unlike their present oppressive one. It is a process in class, peasant women construct and make use of their world.56 which the dignity of abuelitas is realized and actualized. For This includes instructing through oral traditions (much like one, the basis of their dignity is to be found in the imago Dei ancient Israelite culture) in popular and in the Christian understanding of religious beliefs. the imago Trinitatis, which draws out Additionally, abuelita theology centers the relational dynamics of equality, What if the greatest theologians mutuality, and reciprocity. As Israel— the world has ever known are on overlooked and unnamed women throughout history, those whom—while collectively—was called to view the those whom the world would not unrecognized—have changed the course vulnerable as valuable members of of history and provided us with the society engaged in communal worship consider theologians at all? most profound examples of faith. It is a and theological engagement, so we theology of survival, strength, persistence, are to view and engage the abuelitas and resistance. Its goals are to take seriously the religious in our midst—despite their powerless status—and consider understandings of abuelitas in our midst, assure that they are them as a genuine source of theology. Thus, abuelita theology protagonists of their own stories who actualize themselves, their seeks to answer: what if the greatest theologians the world has essence, and come into their truth, as Moltmann suggests. While ever known are those whom the world would not consider the teachings of abuelitas are the starting points for many, there theologians at all? must be a continuous, ongoing, and communal effort to critically Abuelita theology is birthed from the reality that in Latinx discern aspects of inherited traditions that have been colonized.57 religious culture, matriarchal figures, such as abuelitas, within the The theologies inherited from these overlooked and oftenhome are the mainstays of preserving and passing on religious unnamed abuelitas in our communities have given us a firm traditions, beliefs, practices, and spirituality within the family. The foundation of what it means to live out our faith and demonstrate women of the household, specifically the abuelitas, function as love in the world. “These wise women taught us about the power “live-in ministers”50 particularly because the privilege to receive of prophetic words and the responsibility we have to seek and formal religious instruction is often lacking within the Latinx hear them,” wrote Loida I. Martell-Otero, “they did not simply community. Thus, abuelitas serve as the functional priestesses pass on el evangelio (the gospel) as a set of accepted dogmatic and theologians in Latinx familias51 through the informal statements. They nurtured us with a keen sense of the Spirit’s conversation that occurs within the space where many women ability to create anew.”58 are usually relegated, the home. Abuelita theology can be seen as a reclaiming of this space as a place where popular religious Conclusion expression emerges and is preserved. The informal transition This article has demonstrated the ways that the Hebrew Bible’s of religious understandings to the next generation of family ideas of social justice established the foundation for how the members has led some to propose that Latinx popular religiosity ideas of human rights are to be engaged today. The theology of has a matriarchal core.52 Thus, abuelita theology affirms abuelitas the book of Deuteronomy has impacted the modern world’s view as gatekeepers of most of Latinx popular religiosity, with their of justice for the marginalized and vulnerable in society. This is lived experience taken into serious theological consideration. seen in how ancient Israel was commanded by YHWH not only Old Testament examples include Ruth and Naomi, two widows to protect and honor the dignity of widows, but to ensure that whose story is celebrated and revered. they were seen as equal to everyone else in society, partaking in The praxis of abuelita theology is built around everyday life, theological engagement and participation. or what Isasi-Diaz refers to as lo cotidiano. According to IsasiIn our modern contexts, we are to treat poor, marginalized Diaz, lo cotidiano constitutes the immediate space of one’s life, women—or abuelitas—in our midst similarly to those of the “the first horizon in which one has experiences that, in turn, ancient world, not overlooking them because of their age, are constitutive elements of their reality.53 Lo cotidiano refers physical vulnerability, social status, or gender, but honoring to how reality is understood and evaluated—both historically them as “unofficial theologians,” functional priestesses, and and culturally. It is necessarily entangled in material life and backbones of the faith. As a theological discipline, abuelita is a key element of the structuring of social relations and its theology seeks to recognize the imago Dei in abuelitas, limits, situating people in their experiences. It has to do with understanding that when the image of God is degraded in one, the practices and beliefs that have been inherited, and it is what it is degraded in all. Abuelita theology also aims to empower makes the world of each and every person specific. Lastly, “it abuelitas to resist oppression, serve as protagonists of their own is in lo cotidiano and starting with lo cotidiano that we live the stories, actualize their dignity, and come into their truths. multiple relations that constitute our humanity. It is the sphere in which our struggle for life is most immediate, most vigorous, Notes most vibrant.”54 Practically, abuelita theology is both a form 1. Eckart Otto, “Human Rights: The Influence of the Hebrew Bible,” of resisting oppression and a noninstitutional, nonacademic JNSL 25/1 (1999) 1.

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2. Otto, “Human Rights: The Influence of the Hebrew Bible,” 15.

3. Yair Lorberbaum, “Blood and the Image of God: On the Sanctity of Life in Biblical and Early Rabbinic Law, Myth, and Ritual,” in The Concept of Human Dignity in Human Rights Discourse, ed. David Kretzmer and Eckart Klein (Kluwer Law International, 2002) 56.

4. Lorberbaum, “Blood and the Image of God,” 56.

5. James Hanvey, “Dignity, Person, and Imago Trinitatis,” in Understanding Human Dignity (Oxford University Press, 2013) 224.

6. Hanvey, “Dignity, Person, and Imago Trinitatis,” 224.

7. Jürgen Moltmann, On Human Dignity: Political Theology and Ethics (Fortress, 1984) 9.

8. Moltmann, On Human Dignity, 10.

9. Hanvey, “Dignity, Person, and Imago Trinitatis,” 225.

10. Christopher J. H. Wright, God’s People in God’s Land (Eerdmans, 1990) 762.

11. Bunie Veeder, “The Hebrew Bible Widow: Somewhere between Life—Hers, and Death—Her Husband’s” (D.H.L., The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 2011) 10.

12. Stager, “Archaeology of the Family,” 20.

13. Danna Fewell, and David M Gunn. Gender, Power, and Promise: The Subject of the Bible’s First Story (Abingdon, 1993) 100.

14. Veeder, “The Hebrew Bible Widow,” 30.

15. Moshe Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School (Eisenbrauns, 1992) 55.

16. Cheryl B. Anderson, Women, Ideology, and Violence: Critical Theory and the Construction of Gender in the Book of the Covenant and the Deuteronomic Law, JSOTSup 394 (T&T Clark, 2004) 54.

17. Levirate marriage is the modern term (levir is Latin for “brotherin-law”) for a marriage between the widow and a brother of a deceased husband/brother. Such a marriage served to provide economically for the widow and to prevent ending the family line of the deceased. The law is described in Deut 25 and lived out, for example, in the marriages of Tamar (Gen 38) and Ruth (where the custom extends to a more distant relative).

18. Anderson, Women, Ideology, and Violence, 55.

19.

Wessel, “Charity toward Widows in Early Christian Communities,” 68.

20. Charles Fensham, “Widow, Orphan, and the Poor in Ancient near Eastern Legal and Wisdom Literature” JNES 21/2 (1962) 129.

21. Wessel, “Charity toward Widows in Early Christian Communities,” 74.

22. Wessel, “Charity toward Widows in Early Christian Communities,” 139.

23. Wessel, “Charity toward Widows in Early Christian Communities,” 139.

24. Veeder, “The Hebrew Bible Widow,” 55.

25. Nahum M. Sarna, Exodus, JPS Torah Commentary (Jewish Publication Society, 1991) 138.

26. Wessel, “Charity toward Widows in Early Christian Communities,” 86.

27. Walter Brueggemann, Deuteronomy, AOTC (Abingdon, 2001) 73.

28. Brueggemann, Deuteronomy, 73.

29. Brueggemann, Deuteronomy, 73.

30. Veeder, “The Hebrew Bible Widow,” 56.

31. Veeder, “The Hebrew Bible Widow,” 57.

32. John H. Otwell, And Sarah Laughed: The Status of Women in the Old Testament (Westminster, 1977) 125.

33. Veeder, “The Hebrew Bible Widow,” 59.

34. Steinberg, “Romancing the Widow,” 327.

35. Wessel, “Charity toward Widows in Early Christian Communities,” 96.

36. Wessel, “Charity toward Widows in Early Christian Communities,” 96.

37. Wessel, “Charity toward Widows in Early Christian Communities,” 97.

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38. Wessel, “Charity toward Widows in Early Christian Communities,” 98.

39. Bruce V. Malchow, “Social Justice in the Israelite Law Codes” WW 4/3 (Summer 1984) 306.

40. Wessel, “Charity toward Widows in Early Christian Communities,” 99.

41. Wessel, “Charity toward Widows in Early Christian Communities,” 99.

42. Veeder, “The Hebrew Bible Widow,” 56.

43. Hanvey, “Dignity, Person, and Imago Trinitatis,” 225.

44. Ada María Isasi-Díaz, Mujerista Theology: A Theology for the Twenty-First Century (Orbis, 1996) 1.

45. Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz, En La Lucha: In the Struggle: Elaborating a Mujerista Theology (Fortress, 2004) 10.

46. Isasi-Diaz, Mujerista Theology, 1.

47. Isasi-Diaz, Mujerista Theology, 3.

48. Isasi-Diaz, Mujerista Theology, 2.

49. Moltmann, On Human Dignity, 10.

50. Mario T. Garcia, The Gospel of César Chávez: My Faith in Action (Sheed & Ward, 2007) 25.

51. Robert Chao Romero, “Abuelita Theology,” Perspectivas 14 (Spring 2017) 17.

52. Miguel De La Torre, Hispanic American Religious Cultures (ABC-CLIO, 2009) 34.

53. Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz, “Lo Cotidiano: A Key Element of Mujerista Theology,” Journal of Hispanic/Latino Theology 10/1 (Aug 2002) 8.

54. Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz, “Lo Cotidiano,” 9.

55. Mario Garcia, Católicos: Resistance and Affirmation in Chicano Catholic History (University of Texas Press, 2008) 25.

56. Garcia, Católicos, 25.

57. Loida I. Martell-Otero, Latina Evangélicas: A Theological Survey from the Margins (Cascade, 2013) 2.

58. Martell-Ortero, Latina Evangélicas, 2.

KATRINA “KAT” ARMAS holds MDiv and MAT degrees from Fuller Theological Seminary in southern California. She has published in several venues, including Sojourners, RELEVANT, Fathom Magazine, and CBE’s Mutuality. She is affiliated with Fuller Youth Institute, Missio Alliance, and with CBE as a member of the Priscilla Papers Peer Review Team. Her book, Abuelita Faith: What Women on the Margins Teach Us about Wisdom, Persistence, and Strength (forthcoming from Brazos Press), speaks from the intersection of women, Scripture, and Cuban identity. She also explores these topics on her podcast, “The Protagonistas,” which centers the voices of Black, Indigenous, and other women of color in church leadership and theology. Read and listen to more from Kat at www.KatArmas.com.

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Ties that Bind Women in Islam and Christianity Kristin Lassen

Many Western, Protestant Christians oscillate between pity, fear, compassion, and scorn for burqa-clad women. Like many Christian symbols and articles of clothing that honor Christian faith, the hijab is often perilously misunderstood.1 In recent decades, two primary views have emerged within Protestant Christianity regarding the ontology and roles of women, commonly known as complementarian and feminist or egalitarian, with the latter challenging years of dominant patriarchal church culture.2 Likewise, Muslim women expound liberating interpretations of their faith, but the cacophony of centuries-long religious conflict often drowns the voices of women in general.

Elizabeth Warnock Fernea, a pioneer in the field of Middle Eastern women’s studies, joins Middle East and Arabic specialist, Basima Qattan Bezirgan, in describing the misperception of Middle Eastern women by those in their own society. These scholars expand the discussion by asking, “How much greater, then, the refraction or even distortion when persons from different cultures view each other through the prism of their own cultural values?”3 Scholars and practitioners of Christianity and Islam make their cases for women’s equality, though equality may be defined differently for each. The tendency in the East is toward greater recognition for women; in the West, a major goal is inclusion of women in senior leadership positions.4 This article will examine the similar ways egalitarian convictions aim to challenge and change cultural mores vis-à-vis the equality of women, within patriarchal strands of Islam and in patriarchal Christian culture.5 Though these Abrahamic religions are distinct, this article will argue that Christianity and Islam have more in common than meets the eye vis-à-vis the treatment of women. It is my hope that this common ground provides a rich context for both interfaith dialogue and a deeper understanding of a shared holy book—the Bible.

Exploring Commonalities between Christian and Muslim Women The Qur’an is not the Bible. Muslims are different from Christians.

And the communal structure of Middle Eastern society is different from the hierarchical, individualistic West.6 Analyzing the feminist movements in these diverse settings is like comparing apples and persimmons. Nevertheless, many Christian and Muslim women have indeed experienced certain commonalities.

Christian and Muslim Women’s Experiences are more Complex than the Dominant Narratives about Them.

When examining the history of women in Islam, one must move away from the dichotomy that, on the one hand, the Qur’an was radical for its time in its position-advancing statements about women or, on the other hand, Middle Eastern women have lived in inescapable bondage. Both are true, argue Fernea and Bezirgan.7 Openness to complexity without relying on strict dichotomy is one of Paul Lederach’s principles toward developing the moral

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imagination needed to end political violence.8 This imaginative openness is needed to see Middle Eastern women in their multifaceted reality, and then to grasp that the contributing factors to their religious and cultural situation are not so different from those facing Christian women in patriarchal settings.

The capacity to expand one’s moral imagination also requires the humility to see humanity as a web of relationships that includes women, men, friends, and even enemies. Such humility makes possible both the continued pursuit of creativity in a new paradigm and the risk involved when stepping into unknown territory. These factors that Lederach summons to rise above political violence are also necessary in the quest to eliminate gender hierarchy—given the physical, emotional, and spiritual violence that accompanies gender hierarchy regardless of one’s religion.9 Different perspectives emerge when we listen to voices that have been overshadowed by the dominant narratives. Consider, for example, Muslim conservative apologists who argue that the status of Muslim women is “no worse than that of Western women” because Middle Eastern women are “respected, cared for and guarded compared to the licentiousness which characterizes Western relations between the sexes.”10 When women’s voices are heard, however, we find that there are “fundamentally different Islams” that result from different views of the Qur’an; it is “imperative to challenge the authoritarian and patriarchal readings of Islam that are profoundly affecting the lives and future of Muslim women.”11 As a tandem example from Christianity, prominent patriarchal pastor John Piper argues that, when men take the “primary responsibility” for leadership in the home and church, “there are fields of opportunity that are simply endless.”12 Not for women! The words “Not for women,” are scrawled in the margin of the library copy of Piper and Wayne Grudem’s book that I have before me. This simple phrase underscores the Spiritsubjugating experiences that this well-intentioned yet myopic ideology delivers.13 Christian and Muslim Women have had Liberating Teachings of Their Founders Denied or Ignored.

Islamic feminism and Christian egalitarianism desire to ground equality in the Qur’an or Bible, respectively. Egalitarians in both religions present solid, equality-affirming interpretations of their respective Scriptures as the corrective to patriarchal cultural norms that were neither intended nor practiced by their founders.

The Qur’an was quite liberating for women at the time of its writing, and history proves that subsequent Middle Eastern women have often experienced subjugation. Fernea and Bezirgan go on to say that the paradox of Middle Eastern society can be better understood linearly—on one end of the line is the “Koran (the word of God)” and on the opposite end of the same line is “tribal and family custom (the word of men).”14 Economic, social, and familial variance determine how close or far one falls from the “Koranic ideal.” Faithful Islamic women find dignity

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and liberation in the Qur’an. “The problem is the way the Qur’an and Islam have been (mis) interpreted.”15 Many Muslim feminists are careful to distinguish themselves from the Western feminism that disparages sexual modesty.16 “Islamic movements emphasize the need for female modesty, a degree of separation and limiting women’s public roles.” They view their approach to women’s liberation to be preferable to the Western feminism that has resulted in “promiscuity, pornography and the debasing of women.”17 Even as the Qur’an acknowledges the sexual aspects of the female body and “its greater vulnerability to abuse in patriarchies, it does not do so in order to discriminate against women,” to comment on moral character, or to assign gender roles.18 Muslim women find the struggle for equality difficult “because of the assumption that equality is a Western, not an Islamic, value,” yet Asma Barlas explains how “the Qur’an establishes the . . . equality of the sexes” in a way distinct from what Western “patriarchal thought” draws upon.19 Additionally, Western history proves that “there is nothing innately Islamic about misogyny, inequality, or patriarchy.”20 A Protestant missionary to Syria in the mid-1800s noted that Christians in Syria “beat their wives as often as Muslims.”21 The Qur’an also calls men to dress decently and to avoid sexual provocation. Barlas writes that inappropriate interpretations of the Qur’an and the “obsession with the female body” have enforced veiling and have diminished the truth that “the real veil is in the eyes/ gaze” (Surah 24:30).22 This is strikingly similar to Jesus’s words in Matt 5:28–29, “But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell” (NRSV).

Piper and Grudem’s 1991 book, Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, rightly highlights the “high value [Jesus] placed on women by according them dignity in his ministry”23 but then undermines this truth by overlooking the leadership of women in the ministries of Jesus and Paul. Further, the authors argue that only men were apostles, though Junia is named as such in Rom 16:7.24 The book also insists that “top” leadership in the church must be male, in contrast with Paul’s list of leaders in Rom 16, which names more women in ministry roles than men.25 Philip Payne explains that Phoebe held “the clearest NT identification of an individual with titles associated with senior local church leadership.26 Importantly, the women who “gave to Christ” and “served him”—actions named as subservient roles by Piper27— exhibited the leadership that epitomized Christ’s life and death of self-sacrifice (John 13:1–17, 19:1ff., Eph 5:2, Phil 2:1–11).

N. T. Wright refers to such views when he gives the following chilling assessment of their outcome, concluding with a statement of hope: I believe we have seriously misread the New Testament passages addressed in this essay. These misreadings are undoubtedly due to a combination of assumptions, traditions, and all kinds of post-biblical and sub-biblical attitudes that have crept in to Christianity. . . .

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to seize upon misreadings of what the Bible says about women as an excuse for claiming that Christianity in general is a wicked thing and we ought to abandon it.

Unfortunately, plenty of Christians have given outsiders plenty of chances to draw those sorts of conclusions. But perhaps in our generation we have an opportunity to take a large step back in the right direction.28 Unfortunately, patriarchy has long been the dominant motif in the church, as Greek philosophical views of women assumed increasing influence after the laying of egalitarian foundations in first-century Christianity.29 Over the centuries, cultural views of women have been mistaken for the biblical view, and egalitarianism in both religions has been falsely accused of capitulating to culture.

Rebecca Koerselman does not believe that “Christianity or the God whom we worship is patriarchal. If anything, the Bible is very clear about recognizing the poor and the oppressed and raising their status—and women have always been among the oppressed, historically.”30 Disparity exists between both Christian and Muslim origins and later practice. “Even after the Prophet’s time all Muslims without regard to sex were treated alike by authority . . . later, in spite of the clearly expressed intentions of the Koran, its interpreters . . . who had been brought up in an environment in which men avowedly ruled, imposed their own views and traditions upon the Muhammadan world.”31 Khadija was Muhammad’s first wife, was older and economically successful, and had been his boss. She and Aisha, his favorite wife after Khadija died, along with daughter Fatima, had considerable influence on Muhammad and subsequent trajectories of Islam.32 Likewise, Jesus had numerous female disciples (Luke 8:1-3, etc.) and commissioned women to preach the gospel (Matt 28, Mark 16:1–8, Luke 24, John 20).

Christian and Muslim Women have been Told to Submit to Men because Their God is Male.

Deuteronomy 4:15–16 warns against viewing God as male or female: “Since you saw no form when the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the fire, take care and watch yourselves closely, so that you do not act corruptly by making an idol for yourselves, in the form of any figure—the likeness of male or female” (NRSV).33 Viewing God as male results in giving power to men. Barlas notes that, “sexual hierarchies and theories of father/husband rule in religious patriarchies derive from representations of God as Father/male.”34 She returns to the nature of Qur’anic divine self-disclosure to show that this ignores “the Qur’an’s unyielding rejection” of such notions, “displacing father/male rule in favor of God’s Rule and Sovereignty.”35 Similarly, a doctrine common in evangelical Christianity is that a wife must unilaterally submit to her husband. This teaching, erroneously based on texts like Eph 5:22–24, has, in turn, been used to support male as “priest of the home” teachings in clear contradiction with the Bible’s message that Christ is the one mediator between humanity and God (1 Tim 2:5, see also Matt 11:27, John 14:6).36

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Christian and Muslim Women have been Told They are Equal but Have Different Roles.

Surah 33:3537 and certain other passages in the Qur’an are often quoted to suggest that men and women are equal before Allah— but while women are equal spiritually, they are not believed to be equal socially or economically.38 This sounds like the adage of patriarchal Christians, “equal in worth, different in role,” which parallels the modern American “separate but equal.”39 Instead, both traditions strayed from the trajectory set by their founders when deeply negative views of women from the surrounding cultures infiltrated earlier, more egalitarian teachings and practices. This disparity between Scripture and culture is vital to understanding the practice of veiling for Muslim women and biblical references to the same.

Veiling: Dignity or Subordination?

The above description of commonalities between Christian and Muslim women is largely doctrinal. Doctrine and practice are, of course, interwoven, and we shift now to focus on a particular practice that millions of Christian and Muslim women have experienced over the centuries—veiling. This practice, together with the teachings and motivations behind it, will serve as an extended example of the overlapping experiences of Christian and Muslim women.

The Complexity of Veiling in Muslim History In 1923, Huda Sh’arawi, daughter of a wealthy landowner and founder of the Egyptian Feminist Union, removed her face veil in an Alexandria train station in protest of her perceived inferior status. She was well-educated and did not find headscarves to be a requirement in the Qur’an. A movement was born. Years later, however, Egyptian daughters began wearing veils in favor of modesty, “ironically with the same [feminist] rationale their grandmothers used to discard it.”40 “How could this be?” we wonder in the West. “Who would put herself back under oppression?” is the question asked by those who view the situation without a culturally informed lens.

Indeed, the history of veiling Muslim women (and men!) is more complex than the two contrasting situations described above. Consider the following selection of examples: “Early historical chronicles indicate that, in the time of the Prophet [sixth-seventh centuries], a veil was the sign of a respectable woman,” yet in some modern cultures, prostitutes now don the veil to conceal their identity to avoid vengeance from male kin in the form of “honor” killings.41 Among the southern Sahara Tuareg people, the men are veiled to show their high status.42 Into the ninth century, women prayed at the mosque and performed the haj pilgrimage, Islam’s holiest ritual, with faces uncovered.

Barlas notes that in ancient societies the veil indicated high status for women to protect them from non-Muslim men, who saw an unveiled woman as “fair game.” In a non-believing, slaveowning society the veil signified sexual nonavailability, but only when men invested it with such meaning. Consequently, the veil “served as a marker of [non-Muslim] male sexual promiscuity and abuse at a time when women had no legal recourse against such abuse and had to rely on themselves for their

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own protection.”43 Conservative interpretation of Muslim holy texts “inverts their intent” into a need to protect women from Muslim men, “or, alternatively, to shield the latter from viewing potentially corrupt/ing female bodies. These reversals indicate that conservatives accept [non-believers’] views not only of a dangerous and depraved female nature but also of a deviant male sexuality that can be kept in check only by ‘disappearing’ women from view, themes which are missing from the Qur’an itself.”44 We see parallels within patriarchal Christianity: The intent of certain biblical texts is inverted, and cultural ideas about women’s inferiority and male lack of self-control are adopted. For Islam, this has included compulsory and comprehensive veiling of bodies (not just bosom and neck).45 For patriarchal Christianity, subjugation of women often includes policing women’s behavior and clothing, failure of men to take accountability for one’s own lust, and lack of access to leadership roles for women.

First Corinthians 11:2–16 The veiling of Christian women, in its various forms over the ages, inevitably seeks a rationale in 1 Cor 11:2–16. Interpretations of this text have too often inverted Paul’s intent—a commonality with the experience of many Muslim women. Rather than recognizing Paul’s intent of veiling to protect and respect women and to secure women’s authority, reading this text without understanding Middle Eastern veiling traditions results in an inversion of its intent. A statement by Thomas Schreiner, identifying female submission as a key principle for understanding 1 Cor 11:2–16, serves as an example: “The principle still stands that women should pray and prophesy in a manner that makes it clear that they submit to male leadership.”46 Cynthia Westfall, in her book Paul and Gender, provides much-needed clarity on 1 Cor 11:2–16. In the Greco-Roman culture in which Paul lived and worked, Aristotle’s teaching on “women’s essential inferiority” resulted in “gender-based hierarchy . . . based on the [assumed] ontological nature of women and men rather than the standards or conventions of culture.”47 That is, women were devalued because of perceived lower worth, intelligence, and ability; women were different in worth and thus different in role. Men were “shamed and despised” for displaying characteristics viewed as feminine; women were honored for exhibiting virtues considered to be manly.48 (This belief in woman’s essential inferiority remained centuries later in the polytheistic culture surrounding Islam.49) It is in this culture that Paul carefully worded his arguments to protect the reputation and ministry of the church, to “take every thought captive to Christ” (2 Cor 10:5),50 and to do the kingdom work of giving voice to the voiceless (Job 5:11–13, Prov 31:8–10, Luke 1:46–48, 6:20–26). First Corinthians 11:2–16 must be read through the eyes of Middle Eastern women, where men held the power and women of status wore veils for protection and to signify respectability; “Slaves, prostitutes, and freedwomen were prohibited from veiling.”51 Contrary to traditional Western interpretation, it is much more plausible that women were refusing to remove veils in the church, as the “men were the ones who regulated the veiling according to their own interests.”52 (Consider Vashti in Esther 1:11 and Susanna in Susanna 1:31–

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33, where similar dynamics are at work.)53 In this contentious environment, Paul grants back to the woman authority “over her own head” (1 Cor 11:10).54

Conclusion In the religious and cultural complexity of the Middle East, we find Muslim women seeking compliance to a faithful interpretation of the Qur’an. Muslim women desire to be modest, as Islam requires, but resist restrictions that go against the spirit and letter of certain texts in the Qur’an. It is my hope that Muslim women can begin to see Christians as co-laborers in the fight for proper readings of Scripture as it opposes patriarchy. Likewise, I pray that Christians will humbly learn from the shared cultural observations by Islamic women, and thus move toward more consistent biblical interpretation.

From my perspective as a religious and cultural outsider, the varied reaction to “the veil” by Muslim women has much to do with autonomy and respect. Paul’s words accomplish both. The Apostle Paul led the way in affirming a woman’s “authority over her head” (1 Cor 11:10 CEB), which in that cultural context meant that Paul was supporting women, “their judgment, and their honor . . . possibly even against church leadership.”55 We can understand this by looking at ancient Middle Eastern culture, which is similar in many ways to its culture in modern times.

This understanding, together with Westfall’s full explanation of the passage, makes sense of the difficult literary and cultural context of 1 Cor 11. The modern Muslim women who choose hijab for modesty (much to their grandmothers’ dismay) are living examples of the women Paul supported in 1 Cor 11.

Until nearly the 1980s, most traditional interpretation “assumed the ontological inferiority of women . . . and it is implausible to think that an interpreter can effectively shed the foundational assumptions of the traditional view and still coherently maintain the remainder of interpretation and applications virtually intact.”56 Patriarchal leaders, however, attempt to do just that. Though “separate but equal” is a central argument for patriarchal approaches to Christianity, the church must reject “the view that God established ‘separate but equal’ leadership roles for men and women in the church.”57 Christ’s body, the church, must humbly grow enough moral imagination to see every person in a connected web where the human barriers of race, class, and gender have been leveled.

With God as Lord, not gender, may we move into such a future with Spirit-infused creativity and the vision of the new heaven and earth of Rev 21. What we will find, if open to the wisdom of another perspective, is that Scripture has more to offer than we have been privy to. Many Christian men recognize patriarchal ideology for what it is: the sinful desire for primacy over fellow bearers of God’s image. Many Muslim men do as well.58 As an affirmation of women and men working side by side in servant leadership, I close with a Psalm: O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together. (Ps 34:3 NRSV)

Notes 1. See, for example, Jennifer Heider. “Unveiling the Truth behind the French Burqa Ban: The Unwarranted Restriction of the Right to Freedom

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of Religion and the European Court of Human Rights,” Indiana Law Review 22/1, https://mckinneylaw.iu.edu/iiclr/pdf/vol22p93.pdf. Jessica Mendoza. “Why are Non-Muslim Women Wearing the Hijab?,” Christian Science Monitor (Dec 17, 2015), discusses various factors around American perception of the hijab: https://csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2015/1217/ Why-are-non-Muslim-women-wearing-the-hijab.

2.

I use “patriarchal” instead of the group’s preferred term, “complementarian,” because egalitarian Christians also believe men and women complement one another; for the latter, God’s gifting takes precedence over gender in role distinction. N. T. Wright clarifies this well: “to use the word ‘complementary’ and its cognates to denote a position which says that not only are men and women different, but also that those differences mean that women cannot minister within the church, is unfortunate. I think the word ‘complementary’ is too good and important a word to let that side of the issue have it all to itself.” N. T. Wright, “The Biblical Basis for Women’s Service in the Church,” Priscilla Papers 20/4 (Autumn 2006) 5.

3. Elizabeth Warnock Fernea and Basima Qattan Bezirgan, eds., Middle Eastern Muslim Women Speak, The Dan Danciger Publication Series (University of Texas Press, 1977) xvii.

4. Philip Barton Payne, Man and Woman, One in Christ: An Exegetical and Theological Study of Paul’s Letters (Zondervan, 2009) 29.

5. Ibrahim Abu-Rabi explains the complex religious paradoxes surrounding women’s rights and patriarchy in the United States, the Vatican, and Muslim states, in particular Iran and Saudi Arabia. These countries proclaim support of women’s rights but exempt themselves from implementation by citing their constitution, natural law, church tradition, and shariah law, respectively. Saudi Arabia and Iran follow different branches of Islam, and restrictions for women vary. Ibrahim M. Abu-Rabi, The Blackwell Companion to Contemporary Islamic Thought, Blackwell Companions to Religion (Blackwell, 2006) 627.

6. Many would argue that this is not always the case. Here I make a generalized statement about the contrast between Eastern and Western culture, with specific application in the institutional churches that limit ordination to men. This acknowledges the existence of denominations that are more Eastern in their expression and Middle Eastern in their roots, which often uphold a communal (though patriarchal) paradigm.

7. Fernea and Bezirgan, Muslim Women Speak, xvii.

8. John Paul Lederach, The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) 5. Lederach says this in an intriguing way: “the ability to sustain a paradoxical curiosity that embraces complexity without reliance on dualistic polarity.”

9. The #ChurchToo movement and violence against women in Islamic “honor killings” begin to make this point. The emotional and spiritual harm is less quantifiable, yet undeniable.

10. Ruth Roded, Women in Islam and the Middle East: A Reader (I. B. Tauris, 1999) 9.

11. Asma Barlas, “Believing Women” in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qur’an ̄ (University of Texas Press, 2002) 2. Pakistani born and educated, Barlas received political asylum in the United States in 1983 and joined the politics department of Ithaca College in Upstate New York.

12. John Piper and Wayne Grudem, eds., Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism (Crossway, 1991) 53.

13. Piper seems well intentioned in his idea that men are to lead and that anything that counters this viewpoint is from Satan. He believes that instead of pride enforcing a view of (his own) leadership, pride and laziness are what prevent men from leading, proposing that women who “take more leadership” are falsely seen as virtuous (Piper, Recovering, 53).

In Piper’s view men are to be servant leaders, yet servants boost others

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to reach fullness. His view stifles gifting that falls outside of his narrow paradigm of “manhood” and “womanhood.”

14. Fernea and Bezirgan, Muslim Women Speak, xix.

15. John Hubers, “Through the Eyes of Women: Re-reading the Qur’anic Creation Accounts” (Ind. Study, Lutheran School of Theology, Chicago, 2007) 2, available at Academia.edu. Qur’anic creation accounts have been misinterpreted in the same ways which egalitarian Christians show that the Genesis accounts are.

16. Barlas, Believing Women, 160.

17. Roded, Women in Islam, 16.

18. Barlas, Believing Women, 166.

19. Barlas, Believing Women, 27.

20. Barlas, Believing Women, 2.

21. Roded, Women in Islam, 6.

22. Barlas, Believing Women, 157–59.

23. Piper and Grudem, Recovering, 117; description of women’s importance continues on pp. 117–20.

24. Piper and Grudem, Recovering, 120. See Margaret Mowczko, “Is Junia Well Known ‘To’ the Apostles?,” https://margmowczko.com/isjunia-well-known-to-the-apostles/; Dennis J. Preato, “Junia, A Female Apostle: An Examination of the Historical Record,” Priscilla Papers 33/2 (Spring 2019) 8–15.

25. Piper and Grudem, Recovering, 120–22; Margaret Mowczko, “A List of the 29 People in Romans 16:1–16,” https://margmowczko.com/ list-of-people-in-romans-16_1-16/. Mowczko notes that, “seven of the ten women are described in terms of their ministry (Phoebe, Prisca, Mary, Junia, Tryphena, Tryphosa, Persis). By comparison, only three men are described in terms of their ministry (Aquila, Andronicus, Urbanus), and two of these men are ministering alongside a female partner (Aquila with Prisca, Andronicus with Junia).”

26. Philip Payne, https://pbpayne.com/is-it-true-that-in-the-ntno-women-only-men-are-identified-by-name-as-elders-overseers-orpastors-and-that-consequently-women-must-not-be-elders-overseersor-pastors (Nov 10, 2010).

27. Piper and Grudem, Recovering, 121.

28. N. T. Wright, “The Biblical Basis for Women’s Service in the Church,” 10.

29. Bob Edwards, “Chain of Inference,” (Dec 4, 2014), CBE International, https://cbeinternational.org/resource/article/mutualityblog-magazine/chain-inference.

30. Interview with Rebecca Koerselman, Apr 4, 2020. See Dr. Koerselman’s writings at https://inallthings.org/contributor/rebeccakoerselman.

31. Fernea and Bezirgan, Muslim Women Speak, xxiv.

32. Roded, Women in Islam, 32–33.

33. On God and gender, see Abigail Dolan, “Imagining a Feminine God: Gendered Imagery in the Bible,” Priscilla Papers 32/3 (Summer 2018) 17–20.

34. Barlas, Believing Women, 26.

35. Barlas, Believing Women, 26–27.

36. Rebecca Merrill Groothuis, “Equal in Being, Unequal in Role,” in Discovering Biblical Equality: Complementarity Without Hierarchy, ed.

Ronald W. Pierce, Rebecca Merrill Groothuis, and Gordon D. Fee, 2nd ed.

(InterVarsity, 2005) 313.

37. “Muslim men and Muslim women, believing men and believing women, obedient men and obedient women, truthful men and truthful women, patient men and patient women, humble men and humble women, charitable men and charitable women, fasting men and fasting

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women, men who guard their chastity and women who guard, men who remember God frequently and women who remember—God has prepared for them a pardon, and an immense reward.” ClearQuran translation; see https://blog.ClearQuran.com.

38. Roded, Women in Islam, 3.

39. “Separate but equal” was a legal precedent in the United States to uphold racial segregation in the late 1900s through mid twentieth century when it was legislated as unconstitutional. The same segments of the church that spearheaded racism also hold to patriarchal interpretations of Scripture. Essentially, “separate but equal” for the sexes is the central argument of Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.

40. Jeffery Brodd, Layne Little, Bradley P. Nystrom, Robert Leonard Platzner, Richard Hon-Chun Shek, and Erin E. Stiles, Invitation to World Religions, 3rd ed. (Oxford University Press, 2019) 530–31. See also Fernea and Bezirgan, Muslim Women Speak, xxx.

41. Fernea and Bezirgan, Muslim Women Speak, xxv.

42. Fernea and Bezirgan, Muslim Women Speak, xxv.

43. Barlas, Believing Women, 56.

44. Barlas, Believing Women, 56.

45. Barlas, Believing Women, 55.

46. Thomas R. Schreiner, “Head Coverings, Prophecies and the Trinity: 1 Corinthians 11:2–16,” in Piper and Grudem, Recovering, 138.

47. Cynthia Long Westfall, Paul and Gender: Reclaiming the Apostle’s Vision for Men and Women in Christ (Baker Academic, 2016) 14. Cf. Westfall’s introduction and chs, 1 and 8 with Piper and Grudem’s chs. 3 and 5. The latter hold to “headship” as leadership like Christ (63).

48. Westfall, Paul and Gender, 15–17.

49. Roded, Women in Islam, 4.

50. Westfall, Paul and Gender, 4–8.

51. Westfall, Paul and Gender, 25.

52. Westfall, Paul and Gender, 33.

53. Westfall, Paul and Gender, 32.

54. Westfall, Paul and Gender, 39. To understand this argument in full, and for an extremely plausible explanation of “because of the angels” in 11:10b, see Westfall, Paul and Gender, 1–43.

55. Barlas, Believing Women, 39, 42. This is best understood in the context of an ancient Middle Eastern culture, as described by Westfall on pages 7–43.

56. Westfall, Paul and Gender, 4.

57. Payne, One in Christ, 463.

58. Carla Power, “What the Koran Really Says About Women,” The Telegraph (Nov 6, 2015), http://s.telegraph.co.uk/graphics/projects/korancarla-power/index.html.

KRISTIN LASSEN holds a bachelor’s degree in exercise science and fitness management, with a minor in biblical and theological studies, from Northwestern College in Orange City, Iowa.

She will graduate with an MA from Western Theological Seminary, near Grand Rapids, Michigan, in May 2021.

She teaches courses in philosophy and in marriage and family at Northwest Iowa Community College. Kristin navigates life in northwest Iowa with her husband of seventeen years and their four children, who are their greatest blessings. Kristin blogs at Coffee with Kristin https://coffeewithkristin.wordpress.com.

Priscilla Papers | 35/1 | Winter 2021 • 13

Registration is open.

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Check the conference page on our website for regular updates.

2021 Conference Virtual Preview Panel, Part 2 Charles Read, director of liturgy and director of reader training, Norwich Diocese, moderates a discussion with 2021 conference speakers Natalie Collins, Sean Callaghan, and Pontsho Segwai on the leadership strengths of women and men, and how churches can better value and foster a diversity of leadership styles.

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14 • Priscilla Papers

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Ordained Women in the Church Christine Marchetti

Women today have proven themselves successful in medicine, law, and virtually all other professions. Why, then, do certain churches refuse to ordain them? Some churches claim that ordaining women would be contrary to tradition and Scripture.

Men, they say, have led the church for centuries, but female clergy are a relatively new phenomenon, one that reflects the influence of secular humanism and modernism, not orthodox teaching. However, this argument ignores the facts. Indeed, a Roman Catholic—hence complementarian—commission recently acknowledged a long history of women deacons in the church,1 and their findings merely echo conclusions previously published by several researchers. A consensus of scholars concludes that women were ordained deacons, presbyters, and bishops in the church through the Middle Ages.

This paper will discuss the ordination of women deacons and presbyters in the Eastern and Western churches from the second century through the sixth. The continued ministries of female deacons, presbyters, and bishops in the West through the eleventh century will be studied, and the meaning of “ordination” will be examined briefly, as the ordination of men and women in the early and medieval church was not necessarily defined in the same way it is today.2 Finally, the question of why women’s ministries were curtailed will be addressed with a short survey of the views of various scholars on the subject.

Ordained Women in Scripture The first woman in church history to be called “deacon” is Phoebe in Paul’s letter to the Romans. Paul writes that Phoebe was a deacon of the church at Cenchreae (16:1). The Greek word for deacon is diakonos; it means “helper” or “minister.”3 In Paul’s general usage, the term describes the ministry of Jesus (Rom 15:8), Paul’s fellow servants, and Paul himself (Rom 15:25), all of whom preached and ministered to others. Paul attributes the same role to Phoebe.4 Diakonos also refers to a specific function, and in the Pastoral Epistles it denotes a church office,5 similar to the office of episkopē or bishop6 (1 Tim 3:1). Paul uses the term diakonos as a title to describe Phoebe’s function or office in the church.7 Several early Christian writers commented on Rom 16:1, affirming that Phoebe was an ordained deacon in the early church. According to Origen (second and third centuries), the passage “teaches that there were women ordained in the church’s ministry by the apostolic authority. . . . Not only that—they ought to be ordained into the ministry, because they helped in many ways.”8 John Chrysostom (fourth and early fifth centuries) notes that Paul honored Phoebe by naming her first in Rom 16 and mentioning “her rank of deaconesses as well.”9 In his commentary on Rom 16:1, Pelagius, a contemporary of Chrysostom, writes that “women deaconesses in the East are known to minister to their own sex in baptism or even in the ministry of the Word.”10 Theodoret, a fifth-century theologian and bishop of Cyr (a

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prominent city in northern Syria), remarks that the church at Cenchreae was so large, “it even had a woman deaconess, and one who was famous and well-known.”11

Female Deacons in the East The works of the Patristic fathers illustrate the widespread acceptance of female deacons, and in the Eastern church, several canons, literary texts, and inscriptions confirm that women deacons were members of the clergy. The Didascalia Apostolorum (DA), a third-century text, and the Apostolic Constitutions (AC), a fourth-century editing of several church orders including the DA, contain many details about women deacons. For example, both documents put forth a Trinitarian model of church offices in which the bishop represents God, the deacon Christ, and the female deacon the Holy Spirit: “the deacon stands in the place of Christ . . . let the deaconesses be honoured by you in the likeness of the Holy Ghost.”12 The AC instructs bishops on the ordination (cheirotonein) of deaconesses: “Ordain also a deaconess who is faithful and holy.”13 Cheirotonein means ordination to ministry as a member of the clergy, a clear indication that female deacons were ordained members of the church.14 A non-ecclesiastical witness to the existence of deaconesses is found in the Codex Theodosianus, compiled between 429 and 438, which deems that a woman may be “transferred to the association of deaconesses at age sixty.”15 The Council of Chalcedon (451) states that “a woman shall not be ordained as a deaconess before the age of forty,” and it exhorts her to persevere in ministry.16 The word for “ministry” here (leitourgia) usually connotes eucharistic ministry.17 Numerous letters and literary texts add to the evidence of a female diaconate in the East. Basil of Caesarea addressed a letter (dated 372) to the deaconesses who were daughters of Count Terentius.18 As Gregory of Nyssa discussed the details of his sister Macrina’s funeral in 379, he wrote, “there was one in the diaconal rank . . . Lampadion by name, who said she knew exactly what Macrina wanted for her burial.”19 John Chrysostom ordained three female deacons (diakonous) for the monastery of his friend Olympias, and Olympias herself was an ordained deacon.20 Theodoret of Cyr’s Ecclesiastical History refers to a woman who is both a deacon and a teacher.21 In addition to the above examples, Carolyn Osiek and Kevin Madigan cite no less than sixty-one inscriptions mentioning female deacons, many of which are funerary inscriptions listing the woman’s name and her title, diakonos.22

Female Deacons in the West The office of female deacon was more prominent in the East than in the West.23 Female deacons were considered members of the clergy in the East, but the Council of Orange, convened in 441, hoped to avert this practice in the West: Canon 26 stipulated that “female deacons (Latin diaconae) are by no means to be ordained.”24 In 517, the Council of Epaon repeated the prohibition

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against ordaining female deacons, probably because the Council of Orange was not successful. These laws curtailed practices that were actually taking place in certain locales.25 A ban on female deacons was issued again by the Second Council of Orange in 533, but not all Western councils condemned the ordination of female deacons: the ninth-century Council of Rome, for example, merely forbade certain illegal marriages with them.26 A number of literary allusions to deaconesses in the West prove the office existed in some areas. The eighth-century registry of Pope Gregory II contains two letters addressed to deaconesses at the church of St. Eustachius in Rome and one to a deaconess named Matrona. Le Liber Pontificalis records Pope Leo III’s return to Rome in 799, where he was greeted by the entire population, including “holy women, [and] deaconesses.”27 In 1017, Pope Benedict VIII wrote to the Bishop of Porto, on the northwestern coast of Portugal, saying, “We concede and confirm to you and to your successors . . . every episcopal ordination, not only of presbyters, but also of deacons or deaconesses. . . .”28 Despite efforts to eliminate deaconesses in the West, this eleventhcentury pope acknowledged them.

Osiek and Madigan describe five epigraphical records of female deacons in the West, noting this small number is not surprising considering the effort Western councils made to suppress the female diaconate. Female deacons—from the third to the seventh centuries and in both the East and the West— assisted in the baptism of women and were liaisons between laywomen and bishops. They may have had additional duties, including some form of service at the altar.29

Female Presbyters and Bishops Evidence of female presbyters is the subject of scholarly debate.

Some authorities claim that only deviant groups ordained women presbyters, but the evidence is not confined to heretical movements.30 Several medieval women were called presbyterae (the feminine form of the Latin word for “priest”). Some of these presbyterae may have been the wives of priests, but they were the subject of several laws so it is more likely they performed the function of priests.31 The First Council of Laodicea (364) states, “Concerning those who are called presbytides or female presiders, it is not permitted to appoint them in the Church.”32 Gary Macy cites a ninth-century collection of laws by Bishop Haito of Basle that denied women access to and participation in any ministry at the altar. Macy notes that the Council of Paris in 829 objected to the fact that women were still ministering at the altar, perhaps as deaconesses or presbyterae. Whether these women were actually saying Mass is uncertain because the Council claimed their activity was too “shameful to mention,” but it is clear that bishops in some areas allowed it.33 These laws were “only enacted to attempt to end an established practice,” Osiek and Madigan assert.34 Adding to the evidence of presbyterae are several letters that condemn women’s ministry at the altar. In 494, Pope Gelasius I wrote to bishops in southern Italy, complaining that “women are encouraged to serve at the sacred altars and to perform all the other tasks that are assigned only to the service 16 • Priscilla Papers

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of men. . . .”35 Giorgio Otranto believes this letter was meant to “stigmatize and condemn” women presbyters who administered sacraments and performed liturgical service.36 Osiek and Madigan concur: Gelasius’s letter, when understood in the context of contemporary inscriptional evidence (see below), constitutes “very strong evidence that some women in the south Italian dioceses were functioning as fully fledged presbyters,” and they were not members of heretical sects, but part of the orthodox Roman Church. Apparently women were serving at altars in Gaul as well, which prompted three Gallic bishops to write to the male priests involved, forbidding them to continue allowing women to co-minister the Eucharist.37 A letter from Pope Zachary to the Frankish ecclesiastical authorities in 747 condemned the fact that “women have presumed to serve at the sacred altars” and that they “perform all the things that are assigned exclusively to the male sex.”38 In addition to these canonical and literary examples, epigraphical evidence of women presbyters exists. Ten inscriptions referring to presbyterae have been found and three of them have direct bearing on Gelasius’s letter because they appear at roughly the same time and in the same region his letter was written: (1) A fourth- or fifth-century funerary inscription on the tomb of Kalē in Sicily states, “Here lies the presbyter Kalē. She lived fifty years without reproach.”39 This inscription could refer to the wife of a presbyter, but it is unlikely since no husband is named.40 (2) A fourth- or fifth-century inscription on the tomb of Leta “the presbyter[ess]” in Calabria suggests she may have been a true presbyter (not a presbyter’s wife) because although her husband is mentioned, he was not a priest.41 (3) A fifthcentury graffito from Poitiers in Gaul commemorates “Martia the presbyteress [who] made the offering together with Olybrius and Nepos.” Martia was probably a minister who celebrated the Eucharist along with the two men named. Thus, “the claim that women . . . never functioned as presbyters in the ‘orthodox’ church is simply untrue,” Osiek and Madigan conclude.42 Evidence of women bishops includes a fourth- to sixthcentury inscription on a tomb in Umbria dedicated to the “venerable woman, episkopa Q.” A ninth-century mosaic of “Theodora episkopa” graces the chapel of St. Zeno in Rome; because her husband Bonosus had no clerical title, it is unlikely Theodora was a bishop’s wife.43 The Bethu Brigte records the life of Brigid, an ordained bishop in Ireland.44 Macy notes that several women in the Middle Ages received the title of bishop; they were administrators of church property who exercised jurisdiction and shared in the ministry of the episcopate.45

Women’s Ordination The history of Christianity is “replete with references to ordained women,” Macy remarks,46 yet some scholars deny women were ordained or they insist women’s ministries involved something less than “real” ordination. The word “ordain” came into use in the late 1300s. It stemmed from the Old French ordener, in turn from the Latin ordinare, “to put in order, arrange, dispose, [or] appoint.”47 Ordination today generally means to “invest with ministerial or sacerdotal functions or to confer holy orders

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upon,”48 but its meaning has evolved over time, and there is a significant difference between ancient and modern concepts of ordained ministry.

Ordination was originally a way of life, a form of ministry in which one performed a particular function within a particular congregation. The role of the priesthood in the early church was simply service to the community. A priest was a minister who led the community and who naturally assumed the duty of presiding at the Eucharistic meal. But by the twelfth century, a significant shift in the definition of ordination had taken place, and women were excluded from participating in the communion ritual and other cultic functions. Nevertheless, women were ordained from the time of the early church through the Middle Ages “according to the understanding of ordination held by themselves and their contemporaries,” Macy insists.49 If this is the case, why do some historians claim women’s ministries in the early church declined by the end of the second century, at which time leadership was assumed exclusively by men? Why did church law and theological opinion in some parts of Christendom oppose practices that flourished in others? If women were ordained until medieval times, how and why were they subsequently excluded from ministry? The answers to these questions are complex, and it will be helpful to briefly examine the views some scholars put forth.

Women’s Exclusion from Ordained Ministry Justo González acknowledges that women were leaders in the early church, but he claims their leadership roles were eliminated by the end of the second century due to the influence of Gnosticism and the prominence it awarded women.50 In her book, This Female Man of God, Gillian Cloke suggests that Christianity adapted to Greco-Roman social mores when it became the official religion of the Roman Empire. While some of the early male church leaders affirmed women’s ministries, others accepted women only to the extent that certain women were like men. Women were caught in the middle of the orthodox/heterodox debate, Cloke maintains.

She believes women’s ministries were sometimes deemed heretical and the sects they were involved in were quickly condemned.51 Karen Jo Torjesen also cites the impact of Greco-Roman culture which often equated men with honor and women with shame.

Aristotelian thinking was incorporated into Western doctrines of sin and sexuality, distorting perceptions of women’s nature, concepts of “self,” and even ideas about the gender of God. Like González and Cloke, Torjesen believes women’s leadership in certain sects was condemned as heretical.52 Osiek and Madigan agree that some of the historical evidence associated with ordained women, especially presbyters, is deemed “heterodox,” but ample evidence of women’s ordination exists within the orthodox community. However, when the church began to baptize infants, deaconesses (whose duties included baptizing adult female converts) were no longer needed, and increased cultic sacramentalism in medieval Christianity resulted in women’s gradual exclusion from ordained ministry.53 Macy insists that women’s ministries thrived in parts of the East and the West until widespread clerical corruption in the

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Middle Ages prompted reforms. These reforms were designed to enhance the power of the priesthood and the papacy and to separate the clergy from secular authorities and from the laity.

Toward these ends, clerical continence and, later, celibacy were imposed. One of the tactics used by the reformers to “encourage . . . continence and then celibacy was to denigrate women,” Macy remarks. The revival of Roman law and Aristotelian thinking in the scholastic age supported the notion that women are, in Aristotle’s words, inferior to men. As efforts were made to exclude women from ministry, the meaning of ordination was changed.

The priest who presided at the Eucharistic meal was now said to possess the “power” to “make present the risen Christ” (the alter Christus) during communion. By the late Middle Ages, canonists and theologians came to define ordination as imparting special powers that only men could receive. Women were gradually excluded, many records and canons concerning ordained women were expunged, and the laws denying women ordination were preserved and promoted as the “true and only tradition.”

“Scholarly discourse simply wrote ordained women out of the history of the church,” Macy concludes.54 Indeed, as recently as 1976, Pope Paul VI claimed that in the “uninterrupted tradition of the Church” women were never ordained.55

Conclusion This article has provided a summary of the abundant canonical, literary, and epigraphical evidence that proves women were ordained leaders in the church for centuries. Christian communities that deny women ordination cannot claim to do so in observance of sacred tradition; rather, their refusal to ordain women is an affront to centuries of church tradition and practice.

It is the hope of this writer that women who aspire to ordained ministry today find that the rich heritage of their past serves to illuminate their present course and inspire their confidence in the future.

Notes 1. Peter Feuerherd, “Members of papal commission on women’s diaconate make first public comment,” at NCR Online (17 Jan 2019), https://ncronline.org/news/parish/members-papal-commissionwomens-diaconate-make-first-public-comments.

2. Carolyn Osiek and Kevin Madigan, Ordained Women in the Early Church: A Documented History (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011) 5–6.

3. Barclay Newman Jr., A Concise Greek-English Dictionary of the New Testament (Biblia-Druck, 1993) 42.

4. Florence Morgan Gillman, “Phoebe,” in ABD, 5:349.

5. Craig S. Keener, Romans: A New Covenant Commentary (Cascade, 2009) 183.

6. Newman, Concise Greek-English Dictionary, 70.

7. Osiek and Madigan, Ordained Women, 12–13.

8. Origen, Commentary on Romans 10.17.

9. John Chrysostom, Homily 30.

10. Pelagius, “Pelagius’s Commentary on Romans,” in Gerald Bray, ACCS (InterVarsity, 2005) 356.

11. Theodoret of Cyr, Commentary on Romans.

12. Didascalia Apostolorum 9; Apostolic Constitutions 2.4.25.

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13. AC 3.2.

14. Osiek and Madigan, Ordained Women, 111.

15. Theodosius, Codex 16.2.27.

16. Francis Schaefer, “Council of Chalcedon,” The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 3 (Robert Appleton, 1908), http://newadvent.org/ cathen/03555a.htm.

17. Osiek and Madigan, Ordained Women, 122.

18. Basil of Caesarea, Letter 105.

19. Gregory of Nyssa, Life of Macrina.

20. Life of Olympias.

21. Theodoret of Cyr, Ecclesiastical History 3.10.

22. Osiek and Madigan, Ordained Women, 67–96.

23. Osiek and Madigan, Ordained Women, 25.

24. First Council of Orange, Canon 26.

25. Council of Epaon, Canon 21.

26. Gary Macy, The Hidden History of Women’s Ordination: Female Clergy in the Medieval West (Oxford University Press, 2008) 67–9.

27. Macy, The Hidden History, 69.

28. “Pope Benedict VIII to Benedict, Bishop of Porto,” in Osiek, Ordained Women, 147–8.

29. Osiek and Madigan, Ordained Women, 6, 140–44.

30. Osiek and Madigan, Ordained Women, 9.

31. Macy, The Hidden History, 65.

32. First Council of Laodicea, Canon 11.

33. Macy, The Hidden History, 62.

34. Osiek and Madigan, Ordained Women, 164.

35. Pope Gelasius I, “Letter 14, to bishops in Southern Italy,” in Osiek, Ordained Women, 186.

36. Giorgio Otranto, “Priesthood, Precedent and Prejudice: On Recovering the Women Priests of Early Christianity,” trans. Mary Ann Rossi, JFSR 7 (1991) 73–79, at Women Priests (2012), http:// womenpriests.org/traditio/otran_1.asp.

37. “Letter of three Gallic bishops,” in Osiek and Madigan, Ordained Women, 188.

38. “Letter from Pope Zachary,” in Ute E. Eisen, Women Officeholders in Early Christianity: Epigraphical and Literary Studies (Liturgical, 2000) 133–34.

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39. Eisen, Women Officeholders, 128–29.

40. Osiek and Madigan, Ordained Women, 171.

41. Eisen, Women Officeholders, 129–31.

42. Osiek and Madigan, Ordained Women, 9, 196.

43. Eisen, Women Officeholders, 199–205.

44. Bethu Brigte, ed., Donncha ÒhAodha (Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1978) 6, see CELT: The Corpus of Electronic Texts © 1997–2012 (UCC), https://CELT.ucc.ie.

45. Macy, The Hidden History, 58.

46. Macy, The Hidden History, 4.

47. “Ordain,” Online Etymology Dictionary, at https://Dictionary.com.

48. “Ordain,” Dictionary.com Unabridged, at https://Dictionary.com.

49. Macy, The Hidden History, 23, 86.

50. Justo González, The Story of Christianity (HarperCollins, 2010) 1:73.

51. Gillian Cloke, This Female Man of God: Women and Spiritual Power in the Patristic Age, AD 350–450 (Routledge, 1995) 9–10, 212, 220–21.

52. Karen Jo Torjesen, When Women Were Priests: Women’s Leadership in the Early Church and the Scandal of their Subordination in the Rise of Christianity (HarperSanFrancisco, 1993) 7, 37–46, 117, 137, 249.

53. Osiek and Madigan, Ordained Women, 205.

54. Macy, The Hidden History, 31–32, 50–51, 104, 111–13.

55. Pope Paul VI, Inter Insigniore at EWTN (15 Oct 1976), at https://ewtn.com.

CHRISTINE MARCHETTI is an adjunct professor of Religious Studies. She teaches at Northwestern Connecticut Community College in Winsted and has served as a professor and thesis adviser at Holy Apostles College and Seminary in Cromwell, Connecticut. Christine is also an adult education instructor for Middlesex Community College’s MILE Program. She has an MA from Hartford Seminary in Hartford, Connecticut, and a BA in theology from St. Joseph’s College of Maine.

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Also a Mother: Asian Feminist Theology Promotes God Also as Mother Kay Bonikowsky

Imagine waiting to be born inside a small, warm, and dark home.

A New Perspective You feel safe and protected, and every need is provided. You are Kwok Pui-lan defines Asian feminist theology, hereafter AFT, as aware of a faraway pulsing and gentle voice. Eventually, the walls a grassroots movement of theologically trained Asian Christian begin to squeeze in on you. At first, gently, then with greater force. women who are organized to discuss the Bible and faith in the You are ejected not so much out, but into a new home. You are Asian context. It is “also a political movement to transform the born. You experience the gentle voice hinted at inside the womb as church and society so that women’s freedom and dignity will be a person. You recognize her as Mother. In this way, Aída Besançon fully recognized.”7 AFT brings two important perspectives to Spencer describes being born and intimately recognizing your theological discussion by not only focusing on women, but also mother from the inside out. “The mother is experienced first as by its Asian context. AFT offers evangelicals a new perspective this all-encompassing presence in the womb.”1 Being close, or on the motherhood of God because it speaks from women’s immanent, is associated with mother. She asks, “For who could be perspective, its Asian context affirms the value of the family, and closer than a mother and an embryo?”2 its roots in Asian tradition hold opposing concepts in tension Evangelicals are known as “born again” Christians, evoking without negating one or the other. the imagery of re-visiting the intimacy of our mother’s womb.

Why turn to AFT to engage the idea Nicodemus imagined this same idea of the motherhood of God? William when talking with Jesus in John 3. But Asian feminist theologians have A. Dyrness makes clear in his book, Jesus clarified for him that the second no qualms about a theology of Learning about Theology from the Third birth requires something different than World, that listening to other cultures the first: the person doing the birthing. the womb, which explores and stimulates theological conversation, We must be born of the Spirit. Our new celebrates our intimate relationship and with scriptural authority in Mother is the Spirit of God. Protestant with God as also Mother. place it should prompt reflection on reformer Count Nicholas Ludwig von how faith reflects cultural context.8 Zinzendorf understood being born again Although evangelicals trust that Scripture is “transcultural and in this way, primarily referring to the Spirit as Mother in the therefore the final authority in theology,” Dyrness explains last twenty years of his life.3 Zinzendorf did not have a feminist that evangelicals are often unaware of how culture shapes how agenda. He used this term because he believed it clearly and we hear and understand the Word.9 Have we allowed Western persuasively expressed the nature of God. Craig Atwood says culture to influence biblical interpretation? Dyrness cautions that that Zinzendorf “actively encouraged the Brüdergemeine [the this is often the case. Interpreters may tend toward familiar and Moravian church] to worship the Holy Spirit as the mother of existing theological positions and disregard a cultural context the church.”4 As Mother, not only does the Spirit birth new life, that brings a fresh perspective.10 Furthermore, interaction with she protects, guides, nourishes, comforts, and admonishes her theologians from other cultures more often takes on a posture of children. She teaches proper behavior. She asks for obedience. correction rather than of learning.11 Grace Ji-Sun Kim, a KoreanZinzendorf calls the Spirit the “Mother above all other mothers.”5 American theologian, agrees. She says, “Christianity has become Should we hesitate to name the Spirit who gave birth to us so westernized that anything non-Western sounds foreign or as Mother? Asian feminist theologians have no qualms about a untrue or even evil.”12 Koo Don Yun encourages us that “no theology of the womb, which explores and celebrates our intimate single view sees the totality of truth.”13 Truth is not divorced from relationship with God as also Mother.6 Evangelicals are known for the context of dialogue, conversation, and personal identity. So, devotion to the authority of Scripture, yet we have neglected the while all cultural views are not equally true, we should be aware feminine and motherly aspects of God written into the pages of of our own contextual bias and learn to engage with those unlike the OT and taught by Jesus. Even though evangelicals believe the us with the purpose of being mutually corrective. starting point of Christian teaching should be the Scriptures, we A Woman’s Experience can listen to Asian women’s experiences and reflections on God as Mother to deepen our relationship with the one who labored AFT emerged in the late 1970s with an emphasis on the and birthed us into his family. The goal of this article is to provide Asian woman’s experience as its normalizing factor, not the evangelicals with reasons for adding a maternal aspect to Trinitarian Western male mind.14 Western Christianity, influenced by the teaching, in order to bring balance to the male-only imagery in the Enlightenment, has historically forwarded the white male as the Father-Son relationship by gleaning insights from Asian feminist universal self,15 pushing the female experience to the margins theology, which promotes God as both Father and Mother. and casting women as the “other.” Marianne Katoppo, one of

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Though evangelicals teach that the starting point of the first recognized Asian feminist theologians from Indonesia, theological discussion should be Scripture, it is an illusion to describes this as a woman’s status always being “derived, never think that we interpret Scripture’s meaning in a vacuum. All primary.”16 When the experience of men is normalized, God is theology is contextual, formed within the cultural and personal imagined as male, arranging women into the subordinate role experiences of the theologian. It is a fallacy to believe that anyone in the spiritual world as well as the physical. AFT desires to can be completely objective when determining biblical meaning. not only lift women above subordinate roles, but to address the Lesslie Newbigin explains this illusion of objectivity in his feminine aspects of God’s character, such as mothering. book, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society.

Before exploring the theological He asserts that every faith tradition perspective of Asian women, an evangelical might ask whether it is Asian women expect to hear from brings cultural assumptions and that “what we see as facts depends on the valid to consider God in feminine and motherly ways. Because the Bible God in their context of being theory we bring to the observation.”24 presents predominately masculine female, often a subordinate place, We must look to the communal words and imagery for God, it is easy to and in their context of being Asian, experiences of the whole people of God, and Simon Chan suggests including the overlook the Bible’s feminine imagery a racial and lived experience of Christian experiences of those in Asian for God. But in biblical interpretation, countries.25 Asian women expect to we must be careful of assuming physical being colonized and dominated. hear from God in their context of being gender when grammatical gender female, often a subordinate place, and is utilized. Gregory of Nazianzus, a in their context of being Asian, a racial and lived experience of fourth-century theologian, calls attention to the inability of being colonized and dominated. Reading Scripture from the grammar to reflect the true reality of God’s person as having a perspective of an Asian woman will naturally lead to different gender. In his “Oration 31” he writes, theological reflections and social analysis than from the Do you take it . . . that our God is a male, because of the perspective of a Western evangelical. masculine nouns “God” and “Father”? Is the Godhead a However, the contexts of Asian women are “so different and female, because in Greek the word is feminine? Is the word expansive,”26 we must be careful not to universalize all women’s “Spirit” neuter in Greek, because the Spirit is sterile?17 experiences. Despite our hesitation to generalize, there is one Every language differs in its grammatical gender designations. observation that can be drawn about most Asian women’s For instance, the Indonesian language does not have specific life experience. Rebekah S. K. Moon says that Asian women gender pronouns; “he” and “she” are the same word.18 Grammar have suffered all their lives from oppression, injustice, lack of does not necessarily reflect actual gender. recognition, and prejudice.27 Kwok Pui-lan describes some of Even though God is grammatically referred to as masculine the most heinous harms done to Asian women: Baby girls are and the Spirit as feminine (Hebrew) or neuter (Greek) in the often considered the result of bad karma, and female infanticide biblical languages, the Bible teaches that God does not have a and abortion of female babies were rampant in the past and sex. Numbers 23:19 specifically says that God is not a man; Hosea are still practiced today. A woman’s procreation is government 11:9 and Job 9:32 affirm this. John 4:24 says that God is pure controlled, her labor is cheap, and her body is sold for sex spirit, which, unlike a body, does not require a sex. A balanced tourism.28 Regardless of wealth or status, the “traditional Asian view of God recognizes that even though Scripture frequently female virtues of self-sacrifice, obedience and subservience” lead reveals God as relating to us as masculine, it does not reveal to the extortion of Asian women by governments, employers, and God as exclusively masculine.19 The Holy Spirit is the Divine family members.29 Chung Hyun Kyung writes of this suffering Presence as Ruach (Spirit), Hokmah (Wisdom), and Shekinah poetically: “My mother knew my anguish, as only mothers do; (Presence)—all grammatically feminine images of God in the Pitying my misfortune, for she had lived it too.”30 OT and in Jewish tradition.20 In addition to being discriminated against as women, The Spirit is often portrayed as a brooding mother bird.

Asian women also fight the marginalizing influence of Genesis 1:2 says that “the Spirit of God was hovering over the Western colonization which imposed racial, lingual, and waters” (NIV). “Hovering” is the Hebrew word rachaph, also cultural inferiority on Asian peoples. Colonization has taught used in Deut 32:11 to describe God as a mother eagle hovering Asian women that God is like the white culture: powerful, over her nest of young chicks. Jesus longed to gather Jerusalem dominating, all-knowing, a “Great White Father.”31 AFT under his wing like a hen with her chicks, harkening back to recognizes that many Asian women are wary of turning to the the OT picture of the Spirit brooding as a mother bird.21 This West for theological instruction about this “conquering” God, mother bird appeared at Jesus’s baptism as a dove.22 Because of believing such theology to have little relevance for Asia because the feminine references to God in the Bible, many contemporary Christianity is the religion of the empires that colonized their theologians join Count Zinzendorf and affirm teaching the Holy home, displaced them, and fragmented their sense of national Spirit as Mother.23 20 • Priscilla Papers

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the triune God as the divine family.”41 Chan, however, is content identity. As a result, AFT speaks from a place of oppression and with the divine family consisting of “essentially” the Father and silence, not power and influence. The dismissed and overlooked the Son.42 AFT would agree with him that for all Asians, family, poor women living in Asian countries need a compassionate clan, and ancestors are key to individual identity and status, but and affirming God who gives “voice to their hurts and pains.”32 it would also ask how you can have a father or a son without The degree of suffering may differ, but all Asian women have a mother. Marianne Katoppo asserts that belief in an all-male indeed suffered.

Trinity is oppressive to women, and she adds that to have a For instance, in Korea, Confucian influence has ordered the male deity who alone creates life is ridiculous.43 Choi Hee An family into a strict hierarchy that reflects their understanding also recognizes the imbalance of limiting the family relations of the cosmic order.33 The most important duties of a Korean of God to solely Father and Son to the exclusion of recognizing woman are to her family. Thus, she must obey her father and the motherliness of the Spirit.44 This is often done by making the brothers, and when she marries, she must remain loyal to serve Spirit a neutered thing: a dove, a wind, a flame, but not a Mother her husband’s family and produce a male heir. Choi Hee An who births a family.45 AFT recognizes the Spirit as Mother in the writes that Korean mothers learn to meet their families’ needs triune family. at the expense of their own.34 She adds that The basis for teaching the Trinity as Western Christianity, with its patriarchal interpretation of God, has only added to While a Korean woman may a family, with both Father and Mother, this exploitation of Korean women by struggle to understand an is in the Bible. In John 3, the Spirit births the family of God. John introduces us asking for more obedience that removes her personal freedom and destroys her authoritarian Father God, to imagery that has shaped evangelical identity. By normalizing Korean women’s she instinctively understands identity. Jesus told Nicodemus that, “no one experiences as illustrative and instructive of a sacrificing God who loves can see the kingdom of God unless they are born [gennaō] again” (John 3:3 NIV). The the Christian faith, God is presented not as as a Mother.

Greek verb gennaō is used eight times in this an authoritative Father who punishes a lack passage. This indicates a parental theme, of obedience, but as a suffering Mother who as gennaō can refer to either begetting (as in the genealogy in sacrifices everything she has for the sake of her family. While Matt 2, for example) or birthing. Nicodemus interprets Jesus as a Korean woman may struggle to understand an authoritarian referring to a mother’s role when he speaks of re-entering his Father God, she instinctively understands a sacrificing God who mother’s womb in v. 4. Tim Bulkeley details why gennaō in John loves as a Mother. She also recognizes God’s image in herself as 3 is correctly understood as giving birth and not as begetting: she loves and serves her family’s needs. An image of God can be “In verses 5–6 the preposition ek [“from, out of”] is used, which glimpsed in the life of a Korean mother. when used with this verb normally indicates a mother giving This is the reason that AFT begins with women telling stories birth, rather than a father begetting.”46 John uses this birth with the goal of reclaiming “women as subjects with their own imagery throughout his writings. In John 1:13, those who believe thoughts, feelings and voice.”35 AFT aims to develop “alternate in Jesus are born of God. In 1 John, he declares four times that traditions which are inclusive of women and men”36 by those who are born of God will live differently than before reemphasizing that both men and women are made in the image birth (1 John 2:29, 3:7–10, 4:7, 5:4).47 of God.37 In this way, AFT is a “response and a challenge to the Moving beyond John’s writings, James 1:18 says God birthed traditional Christian theology”38 because it re-orders those who are often pushed to the side to now be the focus of theological us by the word of truth. The word used here is apokeueō, which means “to give birth from the womb.”48 This word is also used in 1 identification.39 AFT proposes that, if Asian women are made Pet 1:3 and 1:23 to describe a Christian’s new birth. In each of these in the image of God, then their experiences have something to examples, birth imagery is utilized, not begetting. The imagery teach us about God. of being born again is crucial to evangelical understanding of The Trinity as a Family personal conversion and inclusion into the family of God. Being In designating themselves as Asian theologians, Asian feminist born of the Spirit means that, before we can have a Heavenly theologians draw attention to the historical, mythological, Father, we must be born of the Heavenly Mother. religious, and cultural contexts from which they hail.40 The Jesus does not introduce Spirit-birth as a new concept; he is most important institution in Asian life is the family. Based in building on OT imagery of God as a Mother laboring to birth Confucian traditions, the family is the basis for all other aspects of a child. Moses says that God gave birth to Israel in Deut 32:18 life, with clearly defined roles impacting not only the immediate and Num 11:12. God says that Israel has “been borne by me from family members, but also the structure of Asian society itself. In your birth, carried from the womb” (Isa 46:3 NRSV). When it is this way, patriarchy is ingrained in Asian culture and religion, time for the new age to come, God says he will be like a mother even becoming evident in its Christian theology. Simon Chan, on her birthing bed in Isa 42:14: “For a long time I have held my in Grassroots Asian Theology, says that to reflect Asian family peace, I have kept still and restrained myself; now I will cry out values, Asian theology should be oriented on “the doctrine of

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thought, but it can also lead to finding God as revealed through creation, history, and daily living. Family God understands the struggles of a woman’s life and listens during laundry and when bathing children. Family God knows what it means to work to provide food and clothing for her family.

In Num 11:12, Moses envisions Yahweh as Family God who is also a Mother. After God became pregnant with the nation of Israel and gave birth to them, he expected Moses to breastfeed them and carry them around like a nursemaid. But God had not abandoned the family. He provided We should see the great emphasis for all their needs, and even came to which the people of Asia place on the dwell with his children in the wilderness continuation of family life, and the Asian Feminist Theology brings as Shekinah, a feminine term for God’s Asian outlook on salvation, closely related as it is to the experience of a new perspective on God’s glorious presence.59 Rabbi Joshua ben compassion, his womb, as the Kaska declares that there is no place that life in the mother’s womb.50 Shekinah is not, even the thorn bush that In an Asian worldview, hope is found symbol for his dream of a family burned before Moses.60 As Christians, in “the continuation of life from one of many children. the Spirit dwells inside us, becoming an generation to another.”51 A mother’s womb intimate presence in our lives.61 God’s is the source of this hope, and it becomes people have always experienced Family the symbol of that cherished dream.

God as present with them in their everyday lives.

In the Hebrew language, the noun “womb,” racham, is The Asian tendency to see God present in all of life can lead closely tied not only to birth, but to the emotional response of a to animistic and pantheistic elements also attributed to earthmother to her babe. Racham refers to a “motherly feeling,” and centered, god/dess worship. This causes evangelicals to be it is most often translated as “compassion.”52 As a verb, racham, wary of calling God “Mother” for fear of worshiping a Mother “have compassion,” can be felt or shown by anyone regardless Goddess, something contrary to the God revealed in the Bible of gender, but as a Hebrew adjective, “compassionate” describes who is not contained within his creation, but the Creator God alone. Exodus 34:6 establishes it as an essential attribute of thereof. When God is imagined as a Mother, some evangelicals Yahweh. “Yahweh is a compassionate and gracious God, slow to fear that women will see divinity within themselves and within anger. . .” (author’s translation). God responds to his children all creation. Donald G. Bloesch cautions that this “immanental with motherly feelings. It is with emotion symbolized by a conception of deity” is at odds with the “traditional emphasis mother’s womb that God reprieves those deserving punishment on God as transcendent and all powerful.”62 Mark L. Strauss and offers the hope of continued life.53 Isaiah 49 begins by warns that god/dess worship distorts God’s transcendence saying that God formed and knew Israel while they were in and destroys the personhood of God, leaving only a type of their mother’s womb (49:1, 5). Like a mother could not forget the pantheistic life force.63 Elizabeth Achtemeier says, “If a female child she nursed, nor fail to show compassion on the child she deity gives birth to the universe . . . it follows that all things birthed, so God cannot forget Israel (49:15). AFT brings a new participate in the life or in the substance and divinity of the perspective on God’s compassion, his womb, as the symbol for deity—in short, that the creator is indissolubly bound up with his dream of a family of many children. the creation.”64 This tension between God as immanent Mother Choi Hee An names God as “Family God,” who dwells with and God as transcendent Father revisits what Stanley J. Grenz us in our kitchens, gardens, and inner rooms.54 Western theology and Roger E. Olson call a “central theological concern” of the defines God conceptually, tending toward the abstract.55 This last hundred years.65 How can God be both transcendent and directs conversations to be about God, detached and disengaged also immanent, both a Father and also a Mother? With so much from the experience of connecting with God. Kwok Pui-lan theological muscle invested in keeping these two contrasting suggests that “historical images of divine power, such as father, truths balanced in the twentieth century, it is natural that this warrior, and king” which portray “a God situated at the apex of causes evangelicals concern. power,” who is far above us, do not consistently reflect how God Does maternal imagery of God destroy his transcendence as has connected with humanity.56 Chung Hyun Kyung explains Bloesch, Strauss, and Achtemeier warn? William Placher provides that God did not create and then step back from creation, but an answer in his book, The Domestication of Transcendence, by God engages, moves, and interacts.57 Hence, Asian feminist detailing how the modern definition of transcendence has been theologians expect to experience God in their “everyday, altered as a result of the Enlightenment. Prior to the seventeenth mundane, bodily experience.”58 This pulls God closer. God can century, Christian theologians understood transcendence to be found inside and all around. The emphasis on God being mean that God is unknowable, wholly other and mysterious.66 present in creation has led to a pantheistic affinity in Asian like a woman in labor, I will gasp and pant” (NRSV). Bulkeley explains that “God will initiate forceful action, which will produce something new. This presents the image of God ‘giving birth to a new age.’”49 A mother gives birth, not a father. Again, AFT asks, is God not a Father and also a Mother?

Katoppo stresses the importance of including Mother in the triune Godhead because it is only with a mother’s womb that a family propagates. The Asian hope for the succession of the family is akin to an eschatological vision. She writes,

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The definition shifted in the seventeenth century with the understanding the ease with which Asians accept ambiguity, knowing that this makes evangelical interaction with their scientific desire to categorize, define, and contrast all things, even God. Placher writes, “Rather than explaining how all philosophies especially difficult.73 Another step is to acknowledge that Western culture seeks categories break down when applied to God, they set the stage understanding by breaking things down for talking about transcendence as one of into individual components, whereas the definable properties God possesses.”67 Instead of emphasizing “how little we For many evangelicals, zero- Eastern cultures contemplate the whole and the “sense of interrelatedness of all things.”74 can understand about God and how sum bias appears when Kwok Pui-lan explains it like this: “The inadequate our language is for talk about God,”68 which was the original meaning of the motherhood of God is tendency to see each part in connection transcendence, theologians “domesticated” rejected because we assume with the whole in Asian philosophical transcendence by contrasting it with that asserting God as Mother tradition is very different from the atomistic, mechanistic and individualistic worldview immanence and defining it primarily found in the West.”75 Western philosophy as a spatial location.69 Kathryn Tanner negates God as Father. is categorical, dividing things into systems, clarifies that this “‘contrastive’ account of and seeking absolute proofs. When it comes transcendence makes divine transcendence to theology, Dyrness says that the West seeks “to define God and involvement in the world into a zero-sum game: the more abstractly: What is his nature and how is he to be defined?”76 In involved or immanent, the less transcendent, and vice versa.”70 the West, “analysis is the primary mode of critical thought.”77 For God to be marked by spatial distance as apart and as above The physical world is divided from the spiritual. Dyrness does not leave much room for God to be present and within. contrasts by saying, “in Asia, religion and philosophy are On the contrary, Placher and Tanner both suggest that God’s always integrated.”78 Eastern “thinking tends to be synthetic,”79 transcendence primarily operates through his immanence, “by viewing the physical and spiritual world as interrelated and which God is said to be nearer to us than we are to ourselves,”71 dependent on each other. and for which we lack human explanation.72 Another feature of Asian tradition is the use of symbols Understanding God as “the Great” who birthed everything that allow the philosopher or theologian to present spiritual in creation, as Prov 26:10 declares, does not contradict the truth without insisting it share a concrete physical definition. classical meaning of transcendence as unknowable, wholly The Asian symbol of yin and yang reveals how one can believe other, and mysterious. For as a fetus in the womb knows of a that two physically contradictory ideas, together, hold unifying mysterious other that is nurturing, feeding, and surrounding spiritual truth.80 Yin and yang are physically represented by two her with sheltered care and protection, so we too can experience tear-shaped designs, paired to form a single circle. In Chinese and know God as our transcendent, yet intimately close, Mother. tradition, they symbolize complementary, yet opposing, forces Ephesians 4:6 states that God, as Father, is both “over all and of darkness and light, such as the sun and moon, male and through all and in all” (NIV). Knowing God as also a Mother female, father and mother, and heaven and earth. But it is more does not destroy his fatherly transcendence. Understanding the than a design. Veli-Matti Karkkainen says, “They are relational Trinity as family speaks to the inter-relationship God yearns to symbols,”81 because the one cannot be without the other. One enjoy with his children and also brings him close to us in our can only be known in context with the other. They have an everyday living. independent and cooperating relationship.82 Balancing Two Opposites Asian philosophers have sought moments of insight as they Before explaining how Asian understanding is philosophically contemplated how the dual concepts are opposing, how they prepared to tolerate ambiguity, it will be helpful to confront reflect each other, and how they interact and change to form an implicit bias often found in the Western mind. This is the a third completely new concept called chi.83 Asian theologian thinking that if we give space for one way of thought, it will Koo Dong Yun sees Trinitarian truths for Christianity in detract from the truth found in another line of thought. There contemplating yin and yang.84 Likewise, pondering the truth can only be one winner, for one idea threatens the truth of found in opposing symbols, we can explore how God is not the other. As mentioned above, this is called zero-sum bias. either our Father or Mother, but both a Father and also a Mother In theology, it puts two concepts both taught in Scripture at because God is something completely other than a created odds with each other and drives us to find one winner and one person, which is the original meaning of “transcendent.” The loser. It introduces conflict instead of cooperation. For many goal of this Christian rumination is to draw us closer to God. evangelicals, zero-sum bias appears when the motherhood Asian thinking encourages us to know God, not by categorizing of God is rejected because we assume that asserting God as and defining, but through relationship. As an Asian student once Mother negates God as Father. But this is zero-sum bias at explained to William Dyrness, “God cannot be understood and play. An Eastern mind does not see opposites in conflict, but controlled, God can only be contemplated and sung about!”85 as complementing. Addressing this bias is the first step in

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AFT teaches us that God—as Father and also Mother—is worth both deeply pondering and marveling about.

Perhaps we can take a cue from the OT. Hebrew uses two words for “giving birth,” hul and yalad. Spencer says that “hul refers only to a woman in labor,” whereas yalad can refer to either birthing or begetting.86 Bulkeley agrees and says that hul “suggests the effort and pain of childbirth.”87 When God is said to give birth (hul), the statement is made alongside a statement about God begetting (yalad), so that God is shown as both Father and Mother. Deuteronomy 32:8 presents God begetting and giving birth to Israel. In Ps 90:2, God begets the mountains and gives birth to the world. In Isa 45:9–11, God describes himself like a father begetting and a mother birthing. Like yin and yang, the two opposing ideas can be brought together in harmony when we recognize there is a relationship between them and a third transcendent truth to meditate upon. Evangelicals can learn from AFT to hold two truths that are in tension together in triunity.

Conclusion Focusing on the experiences of women, AFT has discovered an experiential connection with God as a Mother caring for her children. Just as a child turns to his mother time and again for help, reassurance, and needs, so God assures us we can turn to him. Hosea 11:1–4 describes God loving Israel like a mother loves her child: “I led them with cords of human kindness, with ties of love. To them I was like one who lifts a little child to the cheek, and I bent down to feed them” (NIV). Like a mother, God is never off duty, providing constant attention and provision to his creation, even to the little birds (Matt 6:26).

Understanding the Trinity as a family, with both a Father and Mother, deepens our own experience of God’s presence with us. As the baby in her mother’s womb is aware of the allencompassing presence of her mother, so the biblical language and imagery of the Spirit as Mother reveals God to be near, intimate, and permeating all creation. Job 38:29 puts this idea into God’s mouth as he asks rhetorically about creation, “From whose womb comes the ice? Who gives birth to the frost from the heavens” (NIV)? Creation was formed in the womb of God, a biblical idea that is not pantheistic. It is also Christian imagery, forming the nomenclature of evangelicals as being born again from the womb of the Spirit of God as children of God. The God revealed in the Bible is distinct from all other. His image is not found in only one sex but in both. God is Father and also Mother, as one can only be known in context with the other. AFT offers a new perspective on how to use the tension of opposites as spiritual reflection. Reflecting on the difference between the two, their correlations, and the mystery of the Divine Father-Mother takes us out of our comfort zone of defining and explaining and into the realm of worshipful trust.

In the same way that a newborn is aware of her mother while in the womb, but unable to comprehend her reality, we know God is present and close. The child does not know its mother yet, but

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the mother has known her child. This is the experience of being known by God as also a Mother.

Notes 1. Aída Besançon Spencer, The Goddess Revival: A Biblical Response to God(dess) Spirituality (Wipf & Stock, 1995) 13.

2. Spencer, The Goddess Revival, 14.

3. Craig D. Atwood, “Holy Spirit as Mother,” Zinzendorf: The Ecumenical Pioneer (Nov 19, 2011), http://zinzendorf.com/pages/index. php%3Fid=holy-spirit-as-mother.

4. Craig Atwood, “The Mother of God’s People: The Adoration of the Holy Spirit in the Eighteenth-Century Brüdergemeine,” CH 68/4 (1999) 886–909.

5. Atwood, “The Mother of God’s People.”

6. Marianne Katoppo, Compassionate and Free: An Asian Woman’s Theology (Wipf & Stock, 1979) 82.

7. Kwok Pui-lan, Introducing Asian Feminist Theology (Pilgrim, 2000) 9.

8. William A. Dyrness, Learning about Theology from the Third World (Zondervan, 1990) viii.

9. Dyrness, Learning about Theology from the Third World, 17.

10. Dyrness, Learning about Theology from the Third World, 19.

11. Dyrness, Learning about Theology from the Third World, 19.

12. Grace Ji-Sun Kim, Embracing the Other: The Transformative Spirit of Love (Eerdmans, 2015) 85.

13. Koo Dong Yun, The Holy Spirit and Ch’I (Qi): A Chiological Approach to Pneumatology, Princeton Theological Monograph Series (Pickwick, 2012) 19.

14. Choi Hee An, Korean Women and God: Experiencing God in a Multi-religious Colonial Context (Orbis, 2005) 5.

15. Kim, Embracing the Other, 93.

16. Katoppo, Compassionate and Free, 10.

17. St. Gregory of Nazianzus, On God and Christ: The Five Theological Orations and Two Letters to Cledonius (St. Vladimir’s Seminary, 2002) Oration 31:7, 122.

18. Katoppo, Compassionate and Free, 66.

19. Donald G. Bloesch, The Holy Spirit: Works & Gifts (InterVarsity, 2000) 61.

20. Johannes van Oort, “The Holy Spirit as Feminine: Early Christian Testimonies and Their Interpretation,” HTS 72/1 (2016) 5.

21. God refers to himself as an eagle again in Exod 19:4, carrying Israel on his wings out of Egypt. David adopted this imagery to describe his refuge under the shadow of God’s wings in Pss 17:8, 36:7, 57:1, 61:4, 63:7, 91:4. Jesus referred to himself as a mother hen in Matt 23:37–39 and Luke 13:34–35.

22. Matt 3:16, John 1:32–34.

23. Bloesch lists Elizabeth Johnson, Jürgen Moltmann, Geiko MullerFahrenholz, Edward Schillebeeckx, and Donald Gelpi. Bloesch, The Holy Spirit: Works & Gifts, 61.

24. Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (Eerdmans, 1989) 23.

25. Simon Chan, Grassroots Asian Theology: Thinking the Faith from the Ground Up (InterVarsity, 2014) 18.

26. Kim, Embracing the Other, 106–7.

27. Rebekah Sangwha Kim Moon, “Women, Culture and Religion: A Korean Perspective,” in Culture, Women and Theology, ed. John S. Pobee (ISPCK, 1994) 41, quoted by R. L. Hnuni, “Contextualizing Asian

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Theologies: Women’s Perspective,” Asia Journal of Theology 18/1 (April 2004) 138–45, 141.

28. Pui-lan, Introducing Asian Feminist Theology, 115.

29. Pui-lan, Introducing Asian Feminist Theology, 17.

30. Chung Hyun Kyung, Struggle to be the Sun Again: Introducing Asian Women’s Theology (Orbis, 1990) 37.

31. Kim, Embracing the Other, 33.

32. Kyung, Struggle to be the Sun Again, 5.

33. An, Korean Women and God, 36.

34. An, Korean Women and God, 4.

35. Pui-lan, Introducing Asian Feminist Theology, 54–55.

36. R. L. Hnuni, “Contextualizing Asian Theologies: Women’s Perspective,” Asia Journal of Theology 18/1 (Apr 2004) 138–45, 142.

37. Asian Women’s Resource Center for Culture and Theology, “About Us,” https://awrc4ct.org/about-us/.

38. Hnuni, “Contextualizing Asian Theologies: Women’s Perspective,” 145.

39. Kim, Embracing the Other, 109.

40. Kim, Embracing the Other, 106.

41. Chan, Grassroots Asian Theology, 42–43.

42. Chan, Grassroots Asian Theology, 42–43.

43. Katoppo, Compassionate and Free, 73.

44. An, Korean Women and God, 104.

45. Katoppo, Compassionate and Free, 74.

46. Tim Bulkeley, Not Only a Father: Talk of God as Mother in the Bible and Christian Tradition (Archer, 2011) 35.

47. Linda L. Belleville, “‘Born of Water and Spirit’: John 3:5,” TJ 1/2 (Fall 1980) 125–41, 138.

48. Thayer’s Greek Lexicon, ἀποκυέω; see further Jeffrey D. Miller, “Can the ‘Father of Lights’ Give Birth?,” Priscilla Papers 19/1 (Winter 2005) 5–7.

49. Bulkeley, Not Only a Father, 28.

50. Katoppo, Compassionate and Free, 83.

51. C. S. Song, Third Eye Theology (Orbis, 1979) ch. 6, quoted in Katoppo, Compassionate and Free, 83.

52. BDB 933.

53. Deut 4:31; Exod 34:6; 2 Chron 30:9; Neh 9:17, 31; Joel 2:13; Jonah 4:2; Pss 86:15, 103:8, 111:4, 112:4, 145:8, 78:38.

54. An, Korean Women and God, 108.

55. Dyrness, Learning about Theology from the Third World, 23.

56. Kwok Pui-lan, “Fishing the Asia Pacific,” in Off the Menu: Asian and Asian North American Women’s Religion & Theology, ed. Rita Nakashima Brock, Jung Ha Kim, Kwok Pui-lan, Seung Ai Yang (John Knox, 2007) 18–19.

57. Kyung, Struggle to be the Sun Again, 48–49.

58. Kyung, Struggle to be the Sun Again, 92.

59. Katoppo, Compassionate and Free, 77.

60. C. G. Montefiore and H. Loew, A Rabbinic Anthology (Macmillan, 1938) as quoted by Katoppo, Compassionate and Free, 77.

61. Rom 8:9, 1 Cor 3:16.

62. Donald Bloesch, Is the Bible Sexist? Beyond Feminism and Patriarchalism (Crossway, 1982) 10.

63. Mark Strauss, Distorting Scripture? The Challenge of Bible Translation and Gender Accuracy (InterVarsity, 1998) 178.

64. Elizabeth Achtemeier, “Feminine Language for God: Should the Church Adopt It?,” Transformation 4/2 (1987) 24–28.

65. Stanley J. Grenz and Roger E. Olson, 20th Century Theology: God and the World in a Transitional Age (InterVarsity, 1992) 10.

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66. William C. Placher, The Domestication of Transcendence: How Modern Thinking about God Went Wrong (Westminster John Knox, 1996) 6.

67. Placher, The Domestication of Transcendence, 7.

68. Placher, The Domestication of Transcendence, 67.

69. Placher, The Domestication of Transcendence, 7.

70. Kathryn Tanner, God and Creation in Christian Theology: Tyranny or Empowerment? (Basil Blackwell, 1988) 89, quoted by Placher, The Domestication of Transcendence, 111.

71. Tanner quoted by Placher, 112.

72. Placher, The Domestication of Transcendence, 9.

73. Dyrness, Learning about Theology from the Third World, 155.

74. Pui-lan, Introducing Asian Feminist Theology, 75.

75. Pui-lan, Introducing Asian Feminist Theology, 75.

76. Dyrness, Learning about Theology from the Third World, 23.

77. Dyrness, Learning about Theology from the Third World, 131.

78. Dyrness, Learning about Theology from the Third World, 123.

79. Dyrness, Learning about Theology from the Third World, 131.

80. See further Amos Yong, “Yin-Yang and the Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh: An Evangelical Egalitarian East-West Dialogue on Gender and Race,” Priscilla Papers 34/3 (Summer 2020) 21–26.

81. Veli-Matti Karkkainen, The Trinity: Global Perspectives (Westminster John Knox, 2007) 319.

82. Qinghua Zhu, “Women in Chinese Philosophy: Yin-Yang Theory in Feminism Constructing,” Cultural and Religious Studies 6/7 (July 2018) 391–98, 392.

83. Yun, The Holy Spirit and Ch’I, 54.

84. Yun, The Holy Spirit and Ch’I, 54.

85. Dyrness, Learning about Theology from the Third World, 141.

86. Spencer, The Goddess Revival, 113.

87. Bulkeley, Not Only a Father, 22.

KAY BONIKOWSKY holds an MDiv from Multnomah University in Portland, Oregon, as well as a bachelor’s degree in film production. She promotes egalitarianism through her Bible teaching, pastoral leadership, public speaking, and her blog (https://KBonikowsky.com). Kay is married, has three children, and lives near Seattle in Snoqualmie, Washington.

Priscilla Papers | 35/1 | Winter 2021 • 25

Book Review

Rediscovering the Marys: Maria, Mariamne, Miriam

edited by Mary Ann Beavis and Ally Kateusz (T&T Clark, 2020) Reviewed by Elizabeth Ann R. Willett

Rediscovering the Marys: Maria, Mariamne, Miriam, edited by Mary Ann Beavis and Ally Kateusz, consists of seventeen essays by different authors, divided into three sections: Revisiting Which Mary: Does Which Mary Matter?, Rediscovering the Marys in Mission and Leadership, and Recovering Receptions of the Marys in Literature, Art and Archaeology. The authors explore how the biblical Miriam, Mary the mother of Jesus, Mary of Bethany, and Mary Magdalene were portrayed in the early Christian era, also touching on Jewish and Muslim interpretations. While apocryphal gospels and other noncanonical writings, as well as artwork, interpreted them as venerable leaders of their faith communities, later versions diminished them when church leadership became patriarchal. While women’s authority was edited out of literature as well as religious art, archaeology has revealed earlier art that portrays women exercising liturgical functions in the early church.

Regarding which Mary, apocryphal gospels conflate the distinct Marys of the canonical gospels, especially Mary Magdalene and Mary of Bethany, but also somewhat the mother of Jesus. The emphasis on one Mary makes her into a unique figure that may reinforce a stereotype of a patriarchal maleonly leadership interpretation of the Gospels. In the Gospel of Mary, Mary teaches the disciples, combining phrases from the canonical gospels in different ways with new theological meanings. The ascent of the soul to heaven, overcoming various hostile powers, is an important tradition in the Gospel of Mary.

In the book of Acts, Mary is a bridge figure that shows continuity between God’s dealings with Israel and with the new Christian community. As Mary asked God for a sign and then quoted OT phrases in her Magnificat, so the apostles ask God for a sign and Peter quotes Psalms when they choose a replacement for Judas.

As the Spirit came over her for pregnancy, so the Spirit will come over the disciples at Pentecost. Although the unspecified Mary in noncanonical texts including the Nag Hammadi codices1 has traditionally been identified with Magdalene, the Mary in these texts may not be any specific Mary from the canon, but when the texts required a woman disciple, the common name was used.

The John 2 story of Mary asking Jesus to meet the need for wine at the Cana wedding is the starting point for her role as intercessor or mediator with Jesus for people in need. In early Christian literature she exercised leadership as a mediator through both words and actions such as miracles, and as a protectress. Mary was not only an ontological mediator through giving her body to birth Jesus. She had leadership and authority to decide what should be done about petitions. She did not delegate that authority to the divine power above her.

The book critiques certain frames post-biblical interpreters use, especially gender norms in male readers’ culture. Some

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affirm women’s leadership, but redirect it to merely the domestic sphere of procreation and fertility; others suppress traces of their leadership and highlight their negative, bodily portrayal by focusing on sins that men are also guilty of, but creating space between men and the sins of slander and sexual impropriety.

Heroines are evoked to reaffirm women’s sinfulness. Both Miriam and Mary Magdalene play crucial leadership roles in the history of Israel and in the church, but their role is limited to life-giving vitality: birth and continuity. Both Miriam’s and Mary’s bodies are marked by their sins, creating a link between sin, penance, and the feminine body. The characterization of Miriam’s and Mary’s penance downplays the penitential force and focuses instead on their sinfulness, with the result of negating their leadership.

John depicts Mary the mother of Jesus as well as Mary Magdalene as leaders among the disciples; for example, John 2:12 names Mary first before Jesus’s brothers and disciples.

Early Christian writings cite Mary as the primary source of the Passion Narratives that minimize her, offering the sacrifice as a priest at the Last Supper, and teaching women and sending them out with writings to evangelize their towns around the Mediterranean. Old manuscripts of the Dormition text, the story of Mary’s death, portray her preaching the gospel, leading the male apostles who have reported on their missionary journeys, including balding Paul, in prayer, and setting out the censer of incense to God, a prerogative of Jewish priests. Artifacts show Mary as an authoritative and sacerdotal woman with arms upraised as a liturgical leader or offering incense, wearing an OT ephod or a NT deacon’s garb, stole, or communion cloth, or offering her Son to God (in the Temple or at Calvary).

Later narratives about Mary the mother of Jesus were edited or eliminated as the theological and political culture changed. Every version of her life was redacted by later translators and reduced only to the miraculous virgin birth.

Modern commentators emphasize Mary’s virginal motherhood, devotion to her son, emotional laments over Jesus’s suffering, pious fasting and prayers, all respectable female traits.

The original Greek version of the Acts of Philip calls Mariamne, generally thought to be Magdalene, an “apostle” and describes her evangelizing, breaking the communion bread, exorcizing, and baptizing. Later scribes substituted Peter for one of the Marys or redacted the manuscripts to remove markers of liturgical authority.

Early art confirms women in the early church had a liturgical function associated with incense and censers that was later restricted to only men. An ivory pyx2 shows two women, probably two Marys, approaching the altar (probably the Anastasis shrine over Jesus’s tomb) with censers and a

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liturgical procession of women with arms raised. (In Christian iconography, an arms-raised pose indicates a liturgical function.)

A wall painting depicts Jesus’s mother Mary’s deathbed, women swinging censers around her, twelve men sleeping in the background. Later narratives and iconography do not have women with censers, just men, around the dying Mary.

Comparison of different manuscripts shows that different scribes excised different parts of the Dormition narrative they deemed offensive or heretical.

Early pilgrim accounts, funerary epigraphs, and other writings attest that female deacons were active in early Christianity.

The third or fourth-century Syriac Didascalia apostolorum, based on earlier sources, explains that a female deacon was paired with a male deacon and that they were ranked above presbyters. The male deacon represented Christ and the female deacon the Holy Spirit, which was believed to be feminine-gendered and mother.

The presbyters represented the apostles. The two oldest artifacts (ca. 430) that depict Christians in the liturgy of a real church show both women and men with arms raised flanking the canopy over the altar; one shows a man on one side and a woman on the other side of the altar; the other has two women on one side and two men on the other. A veiled woman and a man face each other across the stone altar tabletop. Later scribes redacted passages of women with censers, and later artists replaced the women at the altar with men to reflect later practice.

The book is academic in style, heavy at times, with some technical vocabulary. But, while evangelicals who claim Sola Scriptura might dismiss noncanonical literature and early artwork as mythological or too “Catholic” to carry weight, the evidence presented in this book is encouraging to those who promote women in church leadership as God’s original plan.

Notes 1. That is, certain documents discovered in Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in 1945, such as the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Philip.

2. A pyx is a container for the Eucharist, specifically for the consecrated host.

ELIZABETH “LIBBY” WILLETT serves as a Senior Translation Consultant for SIL International. She trains and consults for mother-tongue Bible translators in Latin America. She coordinated the Huichol Old Testament Project for The Seed Co., a Wycliffe Bible Translators affiliate. Earlier, she and her husband, Tom, facilitated translation in the Southeastern Tepehuan language of Mexico. Libby has an MA in linguistics from the University of North Dakota and a PhD in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Arizona.

Extend Your Influence and Impact for Generations to Come Designate CBE as a beneficiary of Life Insurance, Retirement Assets, Real Estate, or Other Financial Accounts. These gifts generally escape estate, inheritance, and income taxes.

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Priscilla Papers | 35/1 | Winter 2021 • 27

actor Theor e Truth About Women i _, hurch History an e

INTRODUCTION AND HISTORY OF WOMEN IN CHRISTIANITY

HOW THE BIBLE AFFIRMS WOMEN IN MINISTRY

DOES THE BIBLE LIMIT WOMEN IN MINISTRY?

JESUS' REVOLUTIONARY TREATMENT OF WOMEN

RECONCILIATION BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN

I

Breakthrough teaching separates facts versus theories for the main scriptures used to limit women. With fascinating timeline, 50+ scriptures explained, reconciliation teaching and time of prayer. New information for most viewers.

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FACTorTHEORY.org Jane L. Crane is a gifted leader and speaker who has taught

this material on five continents. She was the Lausanne Movement's first Senior Associate for the Partnership of Men and Women and holds a Masters in Peace and Justice.

28 • Priscilla Papers

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Racism, Revolution, and Redemption: Let’s Not Do 2020 Again Daniel Fan

Dear non-POC1 friends of CBE International,

it cannot change culture. George Floyd isn’t dead because it was legal for police to kill black men; George Floyd is dead because If you are reading this message, congratulations. You’ve survived police officers obeyed their culture before obeying their laws. a year of global pandemic, economic recession, social distancing, Such is the power of culture and the limit of revolution. wildfires, floods, an ammonium nitrate explosion, murder Our reliance on revolution is why we keep repeating the same hornets, and likely the most acrimonious US presidential election pattern of majority-complacence, followed in living memory. If you’re looking at by instigatory white-on-POC-violence, this list thinking, “feels like something’s You don’t have to respect their followed by reactive protests/violence, missing,” it’s because some of us didn’t survive the racial disharmony that was conclusions, but if you want to followed by issue-fatigue and complacence inspire them to change, you have to again. Revolution regulates the external, but also a hallmark of 2020.

Almost thirty years ago, I watched understand how they got to where they racism springs internal. I’m asking you, as Rodney King, the riots, the protests, and are. Once you know their story, you can my ally, to break the cycle of complacency and violence by changing your culture in a the blame shifting. I watched people march start showing them a different story. radical way. I’m asking you to help redeem and politicians pledge. And this year, I a racist. watched it all happen again. I have been I don’t need your white privilege in the Capitol Rotunda or angry, sad, and everything in between. I have not been hopeless, in an op-ed.

I have my own voice. I have and will continue to because I know that change is possible, but doing what we did advocate for myself and my fellow POC, just as I am now. thirty years ago is only going to produce the same result it did Rather, I need you at the dinner table, in the Sunday book then. If we seek a different result, we require a different solution. club, on the ninth green, or in the bowling alley on league night: So here is my big ask: I want you to be friends with your I need you to be present in places I can’t get into—in the places local racist. where racists feel safe to be racist.

There are two ways to fight racism: revolution and redemption.

Don’t get up in their faces. Don’t expose them on social media.

Revolution works on the outside. It removes leaders, That kind of revolutionary stunting only results in covert racism: writes legislation, and starts wars. Revolution works through that’s how POC get stabbed in the back instead of the face. If compulsion: laws, shame, ridicule, ostracization, and even whites abandon “racists” to their own means and contexts, the violence. Legislation is a revolutionary methodology, but so is only means and contexts these “racists” will have to fall back on cancel culture. Revolution can change a person’s behaviors, but will be the ones that made them racist in the first place. it cannot change their values. Because it cannot change values,

Revolutionary Ally Model

Redemptive Ally Model

Transactional

Relational

Public Confrontation

Private Confrontation

Victim-focused: liberating the victim from the oppressor

Perpetrator-focused: liberating the oppressor from the oppressor’s own oppressive constructs

Exposes ugliness of perpetrator’s racism to others

Exposes ugliness of perpetrator’s racism to the perpetrator

Violence begets violence: Extreme action by one group justifies No justification for violence extreme reaction by the other group.

Power is seized at the expense of the other.

Seeks progress by way of unilateral compulsion

Power is self-divesting.

Seeks progress through compassionate inspiration

Humanizes victim while dehumanizing the perpetrator Racism is irredeemable.

Humanizes both victim and perpetrator Racism is redeemable.

Emotional context of anger (rage at perpetrator, may or may Emotional context of compassion (for both parties) not truly care about victim) cbeinternational.org

Priscilla Papers | 35/1 | Winter 2021 • 29

The next time “racist” Uncle Walt talks about building a wall to keep brown people out of the country, next time Aunt Margie warns you to stay out of Chinese restaurants because you might catch “Kung Flu,” it’s OK if you are too shocked to confront them in the moment. I trust that your momentary silence will not become permanent. I trust you to prayerfully follow up with Uncle Walt and Aunt Margie. And when you do, I trust you to exercise a model of redemption, rather than revolution. I am not asking you to validate racism; I am asking you to not abandon your own people to the label of “racist.” You’ll know you’re ready to start when you can see them as genuine humans, not diseases or monsters.

I am asking you to listen to Uncle Walt about his time in the Army, over a beer or a coke. I am asking you to sit with Aunt Margie and let her tell you about what it was like to grow up without two nickels to rub together. You don’t have to respect their conclusions, but if you want to inspire them to change, you have to understand how they got to where they are.

Once you know their story, you can start showing them a different story: your story. Ask them about their assumptions regarding POC, then search for and diffuse the fears that underpin those assumptions. You might even be the one person in the whole world who doesn’t label them a “racist” and shut them out. You might be the only person they can turn to.

If Uncle Walt and Aunt Margie can change, they will do so not because they care about me, or any POC, but because you earned their respect and they care about you.

Paolo Freire writes that the oppressed can never liberate themselves: they can only liberate the oppressor and thus find liberation for all.2 The oppressed are trapped by the oppressor, but the oppressor is trapped by the oppressor’s own fears of the oppressed. Only liberating the oppressor from those fears liberates both oppressor and oppressed. Because revolution only works externally, and fear is an internal condition, revolution cannot extinguish fear. But redemption can.

Not everyone can be redeemed. Sometimes those in power need to be removed. But the end of power can sometimes be the beginning of redemption: if at all possible, don’t let the end of power be the end of relationship.

I will admit that redemption takes time. I will even acknowledge that POC will die today because yesterday’s white complacency signs the death warrants for today’s people of color.

But I, as a POC, don’t have anything to lose by encouraging you to liberate racists among your own people, starting today. If your compassion can inspire your own people to care about POC, then our collective tomorrow does not have to be a place that is culturally complacent to the unjust suffering of POC. You don’t have to stand next to me to stand with me. We each have our own gifts, approaches, and experiences. Our hearts inform our approach, but our privilege determines our access. I’m asking you to love your enemy by using your heart compassionately, and your privilege responsibly to see your local racist as a fellow human being worthy of redemption.

Notes 1. POC: People/person of color.

2. Paolo Freire, Pedagogia do Oprimido (1968), trans. by Myra Ramos as Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970).

DANIEL FAN is the son of Chinese immigrants who hoped he would become a doctor, but were willing to settle for a lawyer. He speaks Mandarin Chinese well enough to cuss, order food, ask someone out on a date, and impress a Justice of the Chinese People’s Supreme Court. Daniel grew up in multi-cultural Southern California before moving to the very white Chicago ’burb of Wheaton Illinois to pursue an undergraduate degree. He spent 20 years in the small arms industry and earned a master’s degree from George Fox Seminary before graduating from Lewis and Clark Law School and becoming a practicing attorney in Portland, Oregon. Daniel is thus perfectly equipped to supply humanity with everything it needs more of: guns & ammunition, organized religion, and lawsuits. In contrast with the wry tone incorporated into this biography, Daniel truly believes that the racial divide within this nation must be addressed by a primarily redemptive rather than revolutionary approach. As a former arms dealer and current criminal defense lawyer, Daniel is intimately familiar with the limits of violence and legislation in addressing matters of the heart. Daniel enjoys spending time hiking, portrait and landscape photography, wood crafting, cooking, eating, sewing, traveling, and writing creatively.

With trust in you, and hope for our future together, Daniel Fan 30 • Priscilla Papers

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CBE International CBE International (CBE) is a nonprofit organization of Christian men and women who believe that the Bible, properly interpreted, teaches the fundamental equality of men and women of all ethnic groups, all economic classes, and all age groups, based on the teachings of Scriptures such as Galatians 3:28.

Mission Statement CBE exists to promote the biblical message that God calls women and men of all cultures, races and classes to share authority equally in service and leadership in the home, church and world. Our mission is to eliminate the power imbalance between men and women resulting from theological patriarchy.

Statement of Faith • We believe in one God, creator and sustainer of the universe, eternally existing as three persons equal in power and glory.

• We believe in the full deity and the full humanity of Jesus Christ.

• We believe that eternal salvation and restored relationships are only possible through faith in Jesus Christ who died for us, rose from the dead, and is coming again. This salvation is offered to all people.

• We believe the Holy Spirit equips us for service and sanctifies us from sin.

• We believe the Bible is the inspired word of God, is reliable, and is the final authority for faith and practice.

• We believe that women and men are equally created in God’s image and given equal authority and stewardship of God’s creation.

• We believe that men and women are equally responsible for and distorted by sin, resulting in shattered relationships with God, self, and others.

Core Values • Scripture is our authoritative guide for faith, life, and practice.

• Patriarchy (male dominance) is not a biblical ideal but a result of sin.

• Patriarchy is an abuse of power, taking from females what God has given them: their dignity, and freedom, their leadership, and often their very lives.

• While the Bible reflects patriarchal culture, the Bible does not teach patriarchy in human relationships. cbeinternational.org

• Christ’s redemptive work frees all people from patriarchy, calling women and men to share authority equally in service and leadership.

• God’s design for relationships includes faithful marriage between a man and a woman, celibate singleness and mutual submission in Christian community.

• The unrestricted use of women’s gifts is integral to the work of the Holy Spirit and essential for the advancement of the gospel in the world.

• Followers of Christ are to oppose injustice and patriarchal teachings and practices that marginalize and abuse females and males.

Envisioned Future CBE envisions a future where all believers are freed to exercise their gifts for God’s glory and purposes, with the full support of their Christian communities.

CBE Membership CBE is pleased to make available, for free, every Priscilla Papers article ever published. In addition, find the full archive of CBE’s magazine, Mutuality, and hundreds of book reviews and recordings of lectures given by worldrenowned scholars like N.T. Wright, Gordon Fee, and more!

Find it all at www.cbeinternational.org.

CBE Board of Reference Miriam Adeney, Myron S. Augsburger, Raymond J. Bakke, Michael Bird, Esme Bowers, Paul Chilcote, Havilah Dharamraj, Gordon D. Fee, J. Lee Grady, Joel B. Green, David Joel Hamilton, Fatuma Hashi, Roberta Hestenes, Richard Howell, Craig S. Keener, Tara B. Leach, Gricel Medina, Joy Moore, LaDonna Osborn, Jane Overstreet, Philip B. Payne, John E. Phelan Jr., Ron Pierce, Kay F. Rader, Paul A. Rader, Ronald J. Sider, Aída Besançon Spencer, William David Spencer, John Stackhouse, Todd Still, Ruth A. Tucker, Cynthia Long Westfall, Cecilia Yau. Priscilla Papers | 35/1 | Winter 2021 • 31

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Icons of Christ A Biblical and Systematic Theology for Women’s Ordination William Witt Icons of Christ addresses the role of women in pastoral leadership, making a biblical and theological case for the ordination of women to the ministerial office of Word and Sacrament. Witt treats both Protestant and Catholic theological concerns at length, undertaking a robust engagement with biblical exegesis and biblical, historical, systematic, and liturgical theology.

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Rediscovering the Marys Maria, Mariamne, Miriam Mary Ann Beavis and Ally Kateusz, editors This interdisciplinary volume of text and art offers new insights into various unsolved mysteries associated with Mary Magdalene, Mary of Bethany, Mary the Mother of Jesus, and Miriam the sister of Moses.

Contributors dig deep into literature, iconography, and archaeology to offer cutting edge research under three overarching topics: Revisiting Which Mary, Rediscovering the Marys in Mission and Leadership, and Recovering Receptions of the Marys in Literature, Art, and Archeology.

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The Making of Biblical Womanhood How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth Beth Allison Barr This book moves the conversation about biblical womanhood beyond Greek grammar and into the realm of church history—ancient, medieval, and modern—to show that this belief is not divinely ordained but a product of human civilization that continues to creep into the church. Barr’s historical insights provide context for contemporary teachings about women’s roles in the church and help move the conversation forward.

A Church Called Tov Forming a Goodness Culture That Resists Abuses of power and Promotes Healing Scot McKnight and Laura Barringer The sad truth is that churches of all shapes and sizes are susceptible to abuses of power, sexual abuse, and spiritual abuse. How do we keep these devastating events from repeating themselves?

In this book, McKnight and Barringer explore the concept of tov—the word we translate “good”—unpacking its richness and showing how it can help Christians and churches rise up to fulfill their true calling as imitators of Jesus.

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