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Rosemary Radford Ruether
From Feminist Interpretation
of Scripture
Edited by Letty m. Russell
Westminster Press , Philadelphia
1985
It has been frequently said that feminist theology and
theory of interpretation draw upon women's experience as a source of knowledge.
It has not been entirely clear what this means. It is generally assumed by
traditional theology that any experience, let alone "women's experience," is
merely a subjective and culture-bound source of ideas and cannot be compared
with the objectivity of scripture, which discloses the "Word of God" outside
of, over, and against the subjectivity and sinful impulses of human experience.
As a narrow and contemporary source, experience cannot compare with the
accumulated weight of theological tradition. It is sheer impertinence to
suggest that "women's experience" can be used to judge scripture and
theological tradition.
Such a response, aside from its trivializing of women's
persons, misunderstands the role of human experience in the formation of
scripture and theological tradition. Human experience is both the starting
point and the ending point of the circle of interpretation. Codified tradition
both reaches back to its roots in experience and is constantly renewed through
the test of experience. Experience includes experience of the divine and
experience of oneself, in relationship to society and the world, in an
interacting dialectic. Received symbols, formulas, and laws are either
authenticated or not through their ability to illuminate and interpret
existence in a way that is experienced as meaningful. Systems of authority try
to reverse this relationship and make received tradition dictate both what may
be experienced and how it may be interpreted. But the relationship is the
opposite. If the symbol does not speak authentically to experience, it becomes
dead and is discarded or altered to provide new meaning.
Religious traditions begin with breakthrough experiences
that shed revelatory light on contemporary events so as to transform them into
paradigms of ultimate meaning. These experiences, such as the exodus experience
or the resurrection experience, are the primary data of the religious
tradition. But such experiences, however new and transformative, do not
interpret themselves. They are always interpreted in the context of an
accumulated heritage of symbols and codes, which are already available to
provide touchstones of meaning. The new revelatory experience becomes
meaningful by being related to this heritage, and also it allows the
contemporary community to transform, revise, and recombine the traditional
touchstones of meaning in new ways, which allows the new experience to become a
new insight into the ultimate nature of things.
Just as the foundational revelatory experience is
available only in a transformative dialectic between experience and accumulated
interpretive keys, so it, in turn, becomes an interpretive key which interacts
with and continues to be meaningful through its ability to make ongoing
experience of the individual in the community meaningful. This key then
continues to live because it is able to continue to make contemporary
experience meaningful, and it itself is constantly revised or reinterpreted
through this same process. Traditions die when a new generation is no longer
able to reappropriate the foundational paradigm in a meaningful way; when it is
experienced as meaningless or even as demonic: that is, disclosing a meaning
that points to false or inauthentic life. Thus if the cross of Jesus would be
experienced by women as pointing them only toward continued victimization and
not redemption, it would be perceived as false and demonic in this way, and
women could no longer identify themselves as Christians.
Women's Experience and Feminist Hermeneutics
What is new about feminist hermeneutics, then, is not
the category of experience as a context of interpretation but rather the appeal
to women's experience. It is precisely women's experience that has been
shut out of hermeneutics and theological reflection in the past. This has been
done by forbidding women to study and then to teach and preach the theological
tradition. Women have not been able to bring their own experience into the
public formulation of the tradition. Not only have women been excluded from
shaping and interpreting the tradition from their own experience, but the
tradition has been shaped and interpreted against them. The tradition has been
shaped to justify their exclusion. The traces of their presence have been
suppressed and lost from the public memory of the community. The androcentric
bias of the male interpreters of the tradition, who regard maleness as
normative humanity, not only erase women's presence in the past history of the
community but silence even the questions about their absence. One is not even
able to remark upon or notice women's absence, since women's silence and
absence is the norm.
Thus the criticism of the tradition in the context of
women's experience does not merely add another point of view to the prevailing
one. Women's experience explodes as a critical force, exposing classical
theology, including its foundational tradition in scripture, as shaped by male
experience rather than human experience. Women's experience makes the
androcentric bias of the original formulations and ongoing interpretations of
the tradition visible, rather than hidden behind the mystifications of divine
authority. It throws the universality of the claims of the tradition into
question.
What is meant by women's experience? Surely all women do
not have the same experiences. There are many variations in the consciousness
of women, shaped by different cultural contexts and life experiences. How then
can one generalize about women's experience? Is one suggesting that women,
because of biological differences from men, possess a distinctively "feminine"
psychology, and that it is this distinctive psychology they bring to biblical
hermeneutics?
Biological differences are not completely irrelevant.
Women, as persons who live in and through a female body, have some distinctive
experiences of the world that men do not have. A woman who has experienced her
bodily rhythms in menstruation, or who has borne and suckled a child, feels
some things which males have never experienced. One need not reject out of hand
that women may bring such experiences to the interpretive task. One finds, for
example, in the writings of women mystics, the use of experiences of birthing
and suckling that draw on such women's experiences as paradigms of divine-human
relationships.
However, in this context we are not talking about
women's experience primarily in terms of experiences created by biological
differences in themselves but, rather, women's experiences created by the
social and cultural appropriation of biological differences in a male-dominated
society. In such a society, women experience even their biological differences
in ways filtered and biased by male dominance and by their own marginalization
and inferiorization. Menstruation and childbirth are interpreted to them as
pollution, over against a male-controlled sacred sphere, for example, which
alienates them from a positive understanding of their own bodily experiences .
Insofar as they appropriate their own experiences, such as the experience of
menstruation, as a positive and creative rhythm of ebb and flow, they must do
so in contradiction to the male hermeneutic of their own experience imposed
upon them by the dominant culture. Their positive appropriation of their
experience from their own vantage point becomes a covert critical
counterculture over against the official culture.
Women in patriarchal culture are surrounded by messages
that negate or trivialize their existence. Their bodily sexual presence is
regarded as a dangerous threat to male purity and, at the same time, as a
justification for constant verbal and physical abuse. They experience their
bodies as constantly vulnerable to assault and are told, at the same time, that
they deserve such assault because they "cause" it by their sexual presence.
Similarly, women find their own viewpoints and judgments of events trivialized,
and this trivialization is justified on the grounds that women are inherently
stupid, uninformed, lacking in authority, and incapable of forming significant
understandings. Thus they are alienated from their own minds, from being able
to trust their own perceptions. These judgments upon the woman's body and mind
are, in turn, used to justify women's exclusion from cultural opportunities and
leadership. Women are asked to accept this, too, as normal, natural, divinely
sanctioned .
By women's experience as a key to hermeneutics or theory
of interpretation, we mean precisely that experience which arises when women
become critically aware of these falsifying and alienating experiences imposed
upon them as women by a male-dominated culture. Women's experience, in this
sense, is itself a grace event, an infusion of liberating empowerment from
beyond the patriarchal cultural context, which allows them to critique and
stand out against these androcentric interpretations of who and what they are.
Women begin to name these experiences of negation and trivialization as wrong
and contrary to their authentic humanity. They begin to find an alternative
stand in their own shared reflection on this experience from which to judge it.
They affirm their own bodies and bodily experiences as good and normative for
them, rather than deviant; their own feelings and thoughts as intelligent and
healthy, rather than stupid. From this empowerment to self-affirmation, they
are able to place under judgment—and also progressively to free themselves
from—that culture which negates them.
It is this process of the critical naming of women's
experience of androcentric culture that we refer to when we say that women's
experience is an interpretive key for feminist theology. Women's experience,
then, implies a conversion experience through which women get in touch with,
name, and judge their experiences of sexism in patriarchal society. Not all
cultures create exactly the same experiences of sexism, and individual women
may have experienced this differently as well. So women do not come to exactly
the same criticisms of these experiences or the same conclusions about them.
Feminism must leave room for such individual and cross-cultural differences.
Nevertheless, patriarchy by its very nature provides enough of a common body of
experiences that women, even from different cultures and religions, find
commonalities. But this conversation can happen only when women become freed
and empowered to criticize the experience of sexism as an unjustified assault
upon their beings, rather than accepting it as the norm.
The critique of sexism implies a fundamental principle
of judgment. This critical principle of feminist theology is the affirmation of
and promotion of the full humanity of women. Whatever denies, diminishes, or
distorts the full humanity of women is, therefore, to be appraised as not
redemptive. Theologically speaking, this means that whatever diminishes or
denies the full humanity of women must be presumed not to reflect the divine or
authentic relation to the divine, or to reflect the authentic nature of things,
or to be the message or work of an authentic redeemer or a community of
redemption.
This negative principle also implies the positive
principle: What does promote the full humanity of women is of the Holy, does
reflect true relation to the divine, is the true nature of things, is the
authentic message of redemption and the mission of redemptive community. But
the meaning of this positive principle—namely, the full humanity of
women—is not fully known. It has not existed in history as we have known
it. What we have known is only the negative principle of the denigration and
marginalization of women's humanity. But the humanity of women, although
diminished, has not been destroyed. It has constantly affirmed itself, albeit
at times only in limited and subversive ways. It is the touchstone by which we
test and criticize all that diminishes us. In the process we experience our
larger potential, which allows us to begin to imagine a world without
sexism.
This principle is hardly new. In fact, the correlation
of original and authentic human nature (imago dei/Christ) over against
diminished, fallen humanity has traditionally provided the basic structure of
classical Christian theology. The uniqueness of feminist theology is not the
critical principle of "full humanity" but that women claim this principle for
themselves. Women name themselves as subjects of authentic and full
humanity.
In this light, the use of this principle in male
theology is perceivedto have been corrupted by sexism. By naming males as norms
of authentic humanity, women have been scapegoated for sin and marginalized in
both original and redeemed humanity. This distorts and turns to the opposite
the theological understanding of the created and redeemed image of God. Defined
as male humanity against or above women, as ruling-class humanity above servant
classes, the imago dei/Christ paradigm becomes an instrument of sin
rather than a disclosure of the divine and an instrument of grace.
But this also implies that women cannot just reverse the
sin of sexism. Women cannot just blame males for historical evil in a way that
makes themselves only innocent victims. Women cannot affirm themselves as
created in the image of God and as subjects of full human potential in a way
that diminishes male humanity. Women, as the denigrated half of the human
species, must reach for a continually expanding definition of the inclusive
humanity: inclusive of both genders, inclusive of all social groups and races.
Any principle of religion or society that marginalizes one group of persons as
less than fully human diminishes us all. In rejecting androcentrism (males as
norms of humanity), women must also criticize all other forms of chauvinism:
making white Westerners the norm of humanity, making Christians the norm of
humanity, making privileged classes the norm of humanity. They must also
criticize humanocentrism: making humans the norm and "crown" of creation in a
way that diminishes other beings in the community of creation. This is not a
question of "sameness" but of recognition of value which, at the same time,
affirms genuine variety and particularity. It reaches for a new mode of
relationship: neither a hierarchical model that diminishes the potential of the
"other" nor an "equality" defined by a ruling norm drawn from the dominant
group, but rather a mutuality that allows us to affirm different ways of being
.
The Correlation of Feminist and Biblical Critical Principles
The feminist critique of sexism finds patriarchy not
only in contemporary and historical Christian culture but in the Bible. The
Bible was shaped by males in a patriarchal culture, so much of its revelatory
experiences were interpreted by men from a patriarchal perspective. The ongoing
interpretation of these revelatory experiences and their canonization further
this patriarchal bias by eliminating traces of female experience or
interpreting them in an androcentric way. The Bible, in turn, becomes the
authoritative source for the justification of patriarchy in Jewish and
Christian society. The feminist critical principle thus demands that women
stand outside of and in judgment upon this patriarchal bias of the scriptures.
If this were all the Bible is, the principle would also demand that feminism
reject the scriptures altogether as normative for its own liberation. The Bible
would reveal only a demonic falsification of woman's being; it would not
provide touchstones for a liberating alternative.
The Bible can be appropriated as a source of liberating
paradigms only if it can be seen that there is a correlation between the
feminist critical principle and that critical principle by which biblical
thought critiques itself and renews its vision as the authentic Word of God
over against corrupting and sinful deformations. It is my contention here that
there is such a correlation between biblical and feminist critical principles.
This biblical critical principle is that of the prophetic-messianic tradition.
By the prophetic-messianic tradition I mean to name not simply a particular
body of texts, which then would be understood as standing as a canon within the
canon. Rather, what I mean by the prophetic-messianic tradition is a critical
perspective and process through which the biblical tradition constantly
reevaluates, in new contexts, what is truly the liberating Word of God, over
against both the sinful deformations of contemporary society and also the
limitations of past biblical traditions, which saw in part and understood in
part, and whose partiality may have even become a source of sinful injustice
and idolatry .
In much of human history, the divine world has been used
to sacralize the existing social order. This is done by implying that the gods
created the social order as it is, intending some to rule and some to serve.
The gods promulgated the laws that codify this social order, and so it reflects
their decree. To rebel against it is to rebel against the gods. The patriarchal
social order of men over women, masters over slaves, king (or queen) over
subjects, nobility over peasants itself is seen as reflecting the cosmic and
heavenly order. Hence the divine world is pictured as an immortal imitation of
the ruling classes,
This function of religion as sanctification of the
existing social order is also found in the Bible. It is reflected particularly
in the Levitical codes of the Hebrew scripture and the household codes of the
New Testament. But this function of religion as sacred canopy is in
contradiction to an alternative perspective, which seems to this author to
constitute the distinctive expression of biblical faith. In the prophetic
perspective, God speaks through the prophet or prophetess as critic, rather
than sanctifier, of the status quo. God's will is revealed as standing in
judgment upon the injustices of the way society is being conducted, especially
by the wealthy and powerful. This critique of society includes a critique of
religion. The spokesperson of God denounces the way in which religion is
misused to countenance injustice and to turn away the eyes of the pious from
the poor. In the words of Amos 5:21, 24, "I hate, I despise your feasts, and I
take no delight in your solemn assemblies. . . . But let justice roll down like
waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream."
This prophetic critique of established structures of
injustice, and their religious justifications, creates a reevaluation of the
relationship of God—God's power and will in history—toward society.
Divine revelation does not buttress, but destabilizes, the ideologies that
support the social order. God's prophet points toward an alternative social
order, an alternative era of human history, when these wrongs will be righted
and a new time of God's peace and justice will reign. This biblical principle
of prophetic faith parallels the critical dynamic of feminism, which likewise
examines structures of injustice toward women, unmasks and denounces their
cultural and religious sanctifications, and points toward an alternative
humanity, an alternative society, capable of affirming the personhood of
women.
It may be said that this correlation between the
biblical critical principle and the feminist critical principle is
insufficient, because biblical prophecy does not clearly include sexism and
patriarchy in its critique of social injustice. Women, in expanding the
prophetic process of denunciation and annunciation to include sexism, do so
without biblical authority. In responding to such a justified objection, one
must be clear about the sociology of consciousness of all critical prophetic
culture. One cannot reify any critical prophetic movement, either in scripture
or in modern liberation movements, simply as definitive texts, once and for all
established in the past, which then set the limits of consciousness of the
meaning of liberation. Rather, the prophetic tradition remains true to itself,
to its own impulse and spirit, only by engagement in constant restatement in
the context of the issues of justice and injustice in its times ,
Continuity with the prophetic tradition, then, is not
simply restatement of past texts but the constant renewal of the meaning of the
prophetic critique itself. This means that prophetic critique is in a constant
state of revision by situating itself in contemporary issues and contemporary
consciousness of good and evil and by becoming a vehicle for the critical
consciousness of groups who have been shut out of the social dialogue in the
past. In this process of renewal, one must also examine the limitations of past
statements of prophetic consciousness, which have been limited by the social
consciousness of their spokespersons. Prophetic critique is renewed both by new
critical consciousness of the issues of today and by new perceptions of the
limits and deformations of its own past traditions.
Prophetic traditions are limited and become deformed in
two ways. First of all, there is always a sociology of consciousness of
critical movements. However much the spokespersons of a critical movement
intend to speak inclusively of those who are poor and oppressed in the society,
their perception of who these people are and what the issues are is limited by
their own social context. Prophets are aware of" who is hurting them and the
groups of people with whom they feel primary bonds. They may be insensitive or
oblivious to other oppressed people who are the underside of social systems
from which they themselves benefit. Thus the Hebrew scriptures present us with
a dynamic and moving language that criticizes the social injustice heaped upon
those groups with whom the prophet identifies: the poor rural Israelite farmer
over against the rich ur-banite, and the enslaved Jewish people over against
the great empires of antiquity. But the prophets are oblivious to or justify
that enslavement of persons within the Hebrew family itself: namely, women and
slaves. At most, their vision of justice for these people extends to an
amelioration of the harshness of the system under which they suffer, rather
than a real critique of that system itself or an ability to imagine that God is
calling for an alternative to it.
One can recognize the same limitations of critical
social consciousness in modern liberation movements. Feminism in the West has
called for justice for women, but the white middle-class context of feminists
has often made them oblivious to the class and race bias of their discernment
of injustices and their vision of alternatives. They have often not recognized
the way in which the burning issues of social injustice for them touched very
little upon the interests and needs of Black or poor women. Or a
Christian-based feminism has sometimes sought an affirmation of Christian
feminism in a way that made Judaism the scapegoat for patriarchy. And so what
appeared to be good news for Christian feminists about "Jesus as a feminist"
was experienced as bad news by Jewish feminists.,
One can chart a similar insensitivity to women and to
racial minorities in the Marxist left and in Third World liberation theologies.
Today, feminists and other liberation movements become more aware of the need
for dialogue between movements for emancipation in different social and
cultural contexts in order to expand their sensitivities. But no liberation
movement can speak the universal critical word about injustice and hope for all
time; it always does so within the limitations of its social location. This
means not only that an emancipatory movement may notice some oppressed groups,
but not others in its midst, but also that its particular perception of the
good news for its suffering poor may justify injustice against others. The
announcement of good news for us is always, in some sense, bad news for our
enemies. But this may be understood either in a more self-critical and open way
or in a more parochial and triumphalistic way, which merely wishes to turn the
tables on one's enemies and reduce them to the same oppression that one's own
people is presently suffering, rather than to construct a new humanity and
society where there are no longer victor and vanquished.
Not only may the prophetic consciousness be limited and
deformed in these ways in its own time and context, but, in the process of
formulating and transmitting prophetic consciousness as tradition, the meaning
of early critical consciousness may become deformed by being interpreted in a
different social context. Thus what was once critical consciousness over
against established traditions in one context becomes new self-justification of
established hierarchies in another context, which has absorbed a prophetic
tradition as authoritative text for its own religious establishment.
There are many examples of the process of deformation
and renewal of prophetic language within the scriptures, as well as in the
subsequent ecclesiastical appropriation of these texts. For example, the New
Testament conflict with dominant religious authorities of Judaism operated in
the mission of Jesus and the earliest church as a criticism of fossilized
religion and clericalism in order to call Judaism itself back to its prophetic
mission. But when Christianity became a separate Gentile religion and then the
dominant religion of the Roman Empire, this language of self-criticism was used
to reject Judaism as an inferior religion and to ratify a chauvinistic
triumphalism of church over synagogue.
The language of messianism also can change its meaning
in different contexts. Much messianic imagery was drawn originally from ancient
Near Eastern kingship language. This was critically re-evaluated by the
prophets, detached from its ideological justification of existing kings, and
projected on an idealized future hope. This made messianic language a judgment
upon existing kings and a hope for an alternative social order. But when
Christianity became an imperial religion, this kingship language could be used
to sacralize existing Christian monarchs as expressions of divine kingship and
representatives of Christ on earth.
Servanthood language likewise changes its meaning
radically in different contexts. In its use by Jesus, appropriated from the
prophetic tradition, it means that God alone is father and king. We, therefore,
are freed from allegiance to human fathers and kings. As servants of God
alone, we are freed from servitude to human hierarchies of power. But
when imperial Christianity again lines up these human hierarchies of power as
expressions of Christ's reign, then this servanthood language is used to
reinforce, in Christ's name, the servitude of subjugated people.
Key to this ideological deformation is the movement of
the socio-religious group addressed from powerlessness to power. When religious
spokespersons identify themselves as members and advocates of the poor, then
the critical-prophetic language rediscovers its cutting edge. When religious
spokespersons see themselves primarily as stabilizing the existing social order
and justifying its power structure, then prophetic language becomes deformed in
the interests of the status quo, becoming a language to sacralize dominant
authorities and to preach revenge against former enemies.
One example of reinterpretation of prophetic criticism
and hope occurs in Jesus' interpretation of the text of Isaiah 61. This chapter
of Isaiah opens with the dramatic announcement of good news to the poor.
[The lord] has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim
liberty to the captives,
and the opening of the prison to those who are
bound;
to proclaim the year of the lord's favor,
and the day of
[recompense] of our God.
(Isaiah 61:1-2)
In Isaiah 61 this renewal of the ancient promises of
messianic hope is put together with texts that interpret this hope in terms of
a nationalistic triumph of Israel over the Gentile nations:
Aliens shall stand and feed your flocks,
foreigners shall be your
plowmen and
vinedressers;
..........................................................
.you
shall eat the wealth of the nations,
and in their riches you shall glory.
Instead of your shame you shall have a double portion.
(Isaiah 61:5-7}
In the Lukan version of Jesus' use of this text in the
synagogue in Nazareth, we find a dramatic reinterpretation of this message of
national triumph. Jesus is portrayed as reading the opening verses of Isaiah
and declaring, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing" (Luke
4:21). This evokes admiration and praise from the hometown folks. "All spoke
well of him, and wondered at the gracious words" (Luke 4:22). But then Jesus
launches into an interpretation of the text, and the mood shifts dramatically.
He interprets it as good news and healing that will come not to Israel but to
the Gentiles and, indeed, to women and lepers among the Gentiles (Luke
4:25-27), This prophetic reversal of the interpretation of the text is intended
to call the synagogue community to a criticism of their ethnocentric chauvinism
and to an opening of their minds to peoples around them whom they despise.
Jesus does not feel bound to repeat the interpretation of the text found in
Isaiah, but even to reverse it in order to make new critical points that God is
calling people to hear.
However, for Christians today simply to repeat this
prophetic reversal of the Isaiah text would not mean the same thing as it meant
in a Jewish context. Today Christians would easily read Jesus'
rein-terpretation of Isaiah as a triumphalistic justification of Gentile
Christianity over against an inferior particularism of Judaism. It would be
heard as a word against the Jewish community rather than a word within and for
Israel, calling them to a widening of their vision. Therefore, if we today were
to declare this same text, we too would have to reinterpret it in order to
apply it to the outsiders and the despised of our time.
We might imagine a preacher in the contemporary church
reading the Isaiah text and then doing the following commentary upon it: "There
are many church people all over America who speak constantly of salvation, but
true salvation is only really announced in those gatherings where women preach
hope to women and poor people against patriarchy; and there are many therapists
and healers in the land, but true healing comes only to those shelters which
women have set up to house battered wives and homeless women who walk the
streets carrying their few possessions in shopping bags." Such a commentary on
the prophetic text in our time, as in Jesus' time, might well cause the good
church folks to rise up in fury and try to kill us. The feminist interpretation
of prophetic critique as feminist critique thus continues the process of
scriptural her-meneutic itself, whereby the text is reinterpreted in the
context of new communities of critical consciousness.
Is this the first time that prophetic critique has been
appropriated by women? Is this the first time that women have claimed the
authority to proclaim the good news as the good news of liberation from
patriarchy? We would postulate that wherever women have heard the good news as
the setting at liberty of those who are oppressed, theyhave applied it to
themselves as women as well. We postulate this because our affirmation of the
full humanity of women includes the assumption that women themselves have not
just begun to affirm their humanity in modern times but have always affirmed
their humanity. Patriarchal indoctrination of women to accept their own
inferiority and triviality has never been complete. Indeed, the constant need
of patriarchal culture to reiterate the demand for women's subordination and
silence indicates that women have never lost the sense of their own self-worth
but have constantly asserted it over against patriarchal commands. Thus the
question is not whether women have ever applied the good news to themselves as
women, but how and to what extent the records of this feminist hermeneutic have
survived the effects of patriarchal erasure of women's self-affirmation from
the collective cultural memory.
We can see evidence of such appropriation of the good
news to women in the New Testament: for example, in the stories where women
among the poor and marginalized hear the good news when the clerical
authorities do not; in the records of women's participation in early Christian
ministry; and in the vision of a new humanity where "there is neither male nor
female" (Gal. 3:28). But we also trace in the New Testament the record of
patriarchal erasure of this memory. We need to put the New Testament itself in
the context of other early Christian texts, such as the Acts of Paul and
Thecla, where Paul is understood by early Christian communities not as telling
women to keep silence but as commissioning a woman to preach.
We can trace the ongoing record of women's appropriation
of the good news as good news for women in historical records in every
generation, such as in the androgynous vision of God of Julian of Norwich and
in the scriptural exegesis of Margaret Fell in the seventeenth century, in
which "women's preaching" was justified according to the scriptures. We see
this record of feminist consciousness in the admonition of Abigail Adams to her
husband at the Continental Congress to "remember the Ladies." We see the bold
reworking of the Declaration of Independence in the Seneca Falls Women's Rights
Convention of 1848, where this foundational text of American emancipation was
rewritten as the charter for women's emancipation from patriarchy in church and
society.
Thus the question is not whether women have affirmed
themselves before or whether they have been able to grasp the good news of
male-led prophetic movements as good news for themselves as well. Rather, the
question is how did the beginnings of such feminist reinterpretation become
stillborn in women's minds? Or, if not stillborn, but brought forth in word,
how was this word prevented from being committed to praxis? Or, if committed to
praxis, how was it prevented from being written down? Or, if written down, how
was the textual record of it lost, or reinterpreted, so that it has been erased
from memory? The recovery of our history is the recovery of evidence of all the
stages of this repression. It is also the history of the breakthroughs to
feminist consciousness that have not been completely erased. Here and there,
fragments remain, allowing us to make contact with our sisters of past ages who
also heard the good news and claimed it as their own.
The task of feminist hermeneutics today is not only to
develop and solidify the principles by which women appropriate the good news as
good news of liberation from patriarchy and develop the stories and texts to
proclaim this good news. The task of feminist hermeneutics is also to establish
this theory of interpretation as normative and indispensable to the
understanding of the faith, in seminaries where interpretation is taught and in
churches and synagogues where the good news is preached. In short, the task of
feminist hermeneutics is not only to do the interpretation of the good news as
good news for women but to see to it that the memory of this interpretation
will not again be erased from the collective memory of the communities of
biblical faith.
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