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Letty M. Russell
From Feminist Interpretation of
Scripture
Edited by Letty M. Russell
Westminster Press, Philadelphia
1985
Feminists of the Jewish and Christian faiths are faced
with a basic dilemma. Are they to be faithful to the teachings of the Hebrew
scriptures and the Christian scriptures, or are they to be faithful to their
own integrity as whole human beings? This dilemma is underlined by Margaret
Farley in her analysis of feminist consciousness . It surfaces in Katharine
Sakenfeld's description of feminist uses of biblical materials. Rosemary
Ruether's proposal for a feminist principle as "the affirmation of and
promotion of the full humanity of women" again underlines this dilemma . In
fact, authority is a theme that surfaces constantly in this book, either by the
intention of the authors or by the reactions of their readers!
Whether or not feminists choose to discuss this issue,
it is pressed upon them every time they propose an interpretation or
perspective that challenges a dominant view of scriptural authority and
interpretation. Among those who consider the Bible to be literally the Word of
God, efforts to provide more inclusive translation and interpretation of texts
evoke anger and fear of losing the ground of faith. Among those who consider
historical critical scholarship as the norm for what is to be accepted in
biblical interpretation, feminist interpretations are considered biased and
unfounded and dismissed with little self-examination of white male academic
bias. Even among the contributors to this volume, there is a great deal of
disagreement about the particular mix of religious tradition, experience, and
academic research that leads to feminist critical principles.
In this chapter I would like to take up this question of
biblical authority. I will begin from the perspective of my own life experience
as a Christian, white, middle-class, Protestant woman in inner-city ministry.
Questions of authority are ultimately understood in terms of our own religious,
social, political, and economic setting or context. It is important to make
that context clear and invite others to share their own contexts and how these
shape their views of authority. Readers who have missed this connection in
their own lives may have explored the influence of history on feminist
consciousness with Barbara Zikmund in chapter 1 or seen the impact of context
in Katie Cannon's description of the way biblical interpretation in the Black
church "dealt with contingencies in the real-lived context After discussing the
biblical basis of my theology, I want to examine here what it means to speak of
the Bible as authoritative and then suggest how a feminist paradigm of
authority might help to address the dilemma of the "hit parade of
authority."
The Biblical Basis of My Theology
In spite of the patriarchal nature of the biblical
texts, I myself have no intention of giving up the biblical basis of my
theology. With Rosemary Ruether I would argue that the Bible has a critical or
liberating tradition embodied in its "prophetic-messianic" message of
continuing self-critique. The evidence for a biblical message of liberation for
women, as for other marginalized groups, is not found just in particular
stories about women or particular female images of God. It is found in God's
intention for the mending of all creation. The Bible has authority in my life
because it makes sense of my experience and speaks to me about the meaning and
purpose of my humanity in Jesus Christ. In spite of its ancient and patriarchal
world views, in spite of its inconsistencies and mixed messages, the story of
God's love affair with the world leads me to a vision of New Creation that
impels my life.
Scripture and Script
I am one of those for whom the Bible continues to be a
liberating word as I hear it together with others and struggle to live out its
story. For me the Bible is "scripture," or sacred writing, because it functions
as "script," or prompting for life. Its authority in my life stems from its
story of God's invitation to participation in the restoration of wholeness,
peace, and justice in the world. Responding to this invitation has made it my
own story, or script, through the power of the Spirit at work in communities of
struggle and faith. In the same way I could say with Elisabeth Fiorenza that
the Bible provides a "prototype" for my own story that "sets experiences in
motion and invites transformation".
My particular story is one shaped by seventeen years
with a poor, racially mixed community of struggle and witness in the East
Harlem Protestant Parish in New York City. In such a context the Bible did not
have all the answers, but it provided a source of meaning and hope for our
lives. Somehow the texts we really lived with, and struggled with, seemed to
speak in ever new ways on our road toward freedom. In East Harlem the story of
God's concern for humanity showed us that "nobodies" in the eyes of the
dominant society could be "somebodies." I still believe this, believe that in
God's sight I am not marginal but that, like my Black and Hispanic sisters and
brothers in East Harlem, I came created by God and called by the biblical word
of promise to become what God intends me to become: a partner in the mending of
creation.
Mending Creation
The particular interpretive key that assists me in
continuing to give assent is the witness of scripture to God's promise (for the
mending of creation) on its way to fulfillment. That which denies this
intention of God for the liberation of groaning creation in all its parts does
not compel or evoke my assent (i.e., it is not authoritative). Although I
arrived at this interpretive key through my own life story, it is not unlike
the interpretive key proposed by Ruether as God's affirmation of the full
humanity of women and all persons seen in the prophetic witness of scripture
against injustice and dehumanization. Nor is it very dissimilar to Fiorenza's
interpretive key of Jesus and the discipleship of equals, even though she
arrives at the key through a very different process of careful biblical
reconstruction in her book In Memory of Her.(1)
As a feminist I look to the horizon of expectation of
the Bible as the source of my own expectation of justice and liberation. In
this way the Bible is not only prototype, it is also "a memory of the future"
that constantly opens up the possibility of new life through the small glimpses
and anticipations of God's partnership at work in the biblical story and in our
own lives. In God's action of New Creation, women and men are already set free
to develop new ways of relating to one another, to the world, and to God. This
freedom of living in the "already, but not yet" of the New Creation is key to
those who are struggling with structures of oppression and with biblical texts
that are used to justify and even to bless these structures in ways such as
those described by Susan Thistlethwaite in chapter 8 on the oppressive (or
liberating) role of scripture in the lives of battered women. We are not left
with stories of the past in the biblical witness. The stories themselves are
open-ended. There is more to come. And this anticipation of New Creation
can be the source of actions to bring this vision of new life into the present
struggles for human dignity.(2)
Perhaps it would seem more useful to give up on the
Bible as a normative source of my theology, but I don't seem to be able to do
that. The biblical witness continues to evoke my consent, even as I reject many
of its teachings as well as its patriarchal context. And, as Mary Ann Tolbert
has pointed out in her article in The Bible and Feminist Hermeneutics, I
am not alone in this. She claims that feminist biblical scholarship is
profoundly paradoxical because "one must struggle against God as enemy assisted
by God as helper, or one must defeat the Bible as patriarchal authority by
using the Bible as liberator."(3) I continue to live with this paradox because
the Bible still helps to make sense of who I am, and because the biblical
witness opens the way to a future that will be so radically different from the
present that it will be called new! (Rom. 8:31-32).
Authoritative Use of Scripture
The issue of authority is not an easy one, for it is
basic to the way we see and interpret the world in which we live. As Sallie
McFague has shown in her book Metaphorical Theology, paradigms or
interpretive frameworks for understanding reality provide total contexts for
interpretation or meaning and are very slow to change.(4) Each time there is a
paradigm shift in the field of theology, much of the prior theological
understanding continues, yet there is a new understanding of that which evokes
consent of faith and action. Each theological shift involves a change in what
counts as authoritative in the tradition. Feminist theologies, in articulating
such a paradigm shift, bring into question what has been understood as
authoritative in every aspect of biblical religion, including the use of
scripture in academic and faith communities.
Interpretive Framework
The discussions of feminist interpretation among those
who helped shape this volume of essays seemed to move to a consensus that the
authority of the Bible has to be understood in a way that accounts for the fact
that, frequently, the texts are not only contradictory but also sexist, racist,
and triumphalist. No interpretation of authority that reinforces patriarchal
structures of domination would be acceptable for feminist interpretation. The
Bible is understood to be a "dangerous book" that has often been used to teach
slaves and women to be subservient to masters and to provide God's blessing for
warfare. It is not surprising to note that some Black Christians refuse to read
sections of Paul's letters in church,(5) or that some women have added the
subtitle, This book may be dangerous to your health. We know that
everything the Bible says is not equally helpful to us as women of faith and
that there are false interpretations and misuses of the scriptures. The Bible
is especially dangerous if we call it "the Word of God" and think that divine
inspiration means that everything we read is right.(6) But divine inspiration
means that God's Spirit has the power to make the story speak to us from faith
to faith. The Bible is accepted as the Word of God when communities of faith
understand God to be speaking to them in and through its message.
How does the Bible come to make sense in communities of
faith? Not through a literal reading of the text but through what David Kelsey
calls an "imaginative construal" or configuration of criteria that evoke our
consent and become normative for the way we would live the life of faith.
To say that the Biblical texts taken as scripture are
"authority" for the church and theology is to say that they provide patterns
determinate enough to function as basis for assessment of the Christian
aptness of current churchly forms of life and speech and of theologians'
proposals for reform of that life and speech,(7)
The particular pattern of criteria is an imaginative
judgment concerning the use of scripture and the mode in which God is
understood as present among the faithful.
According to Kelsey, the imaginative act of the
theologian in creating a configuration of criteria that evoke consent is
accountable to the common life of the religious community out of which she or
he speaks. He lists three limits of theological imagination or claim to
authoritative use of scripture: The claim must include intelligible discourse
capable of consistent formulation and reasoned elaboration and justification;
it must reflect the structure of tradition as scripture is used to nurture and
reform the identity of a particular faith community; and it must be seriously
imaginable in the particular cultural context where the interpretation takes
place.(8) Kelsey's functional view of what it means that the Bible has
authority in any given interpretation seems to be at least one way of
recognizing the variety of approaches to authority that are present among
feminists interpreting scripture. His concept of "imaginative construal" comes
very close to what McFague and others have called an interpretive framework or
paradigm: a common perspective on reality made up of a particular constellation
of beliefs, values, and methods.(9) In addition, it seems to me that the
suggested limits of interpretation point to a way that feminist and liberation
critical perspective are beginning to shift the prevailing interpretive
paradigms.
Feminist Interpretation
The imaginative configuration of feminist interpretation
seeks to be a form of intelligible discourse, speaking in a logical,
consistent, and documented way out of a variety of academic disciplines and
religious traditions. Yet along with other liberation theologies, stress is
placed on an inductive process of action and reflection in which a major
criterion for consistency is the way that reflection is brought together with
action. As we can see in Fiorenza's chapter, the method of interpretation is
integrated with actions of advocacy.
Feminist interpretation most certainly makes use of the
structure of tradition, but it raises radical questions about the oppressive
ways that scripture and tradition have been used and about the unfaithfulness
of church and synagogue as guardians of that tradition. An excellent example of
the reconstruction of theological tradition is found in Rosemary Ruether's
Sexism and God Talk, Here she takes up traditional subjects of Christian
theology, such as God, Christ, the Spirit, and the Church, and not only
critiques the previous sexist formulations but provides clues for reformulating
Christian theology.
The third limit on imaginative configuration, speaking
of what is seriously imaginable, has been transformed from a limit to a
fundamental norm in feminist interpretation. As Margaret Farley has pointed
out, speaking of what is seriously imaginable in the lives of women and other
oppressed groups raises questions of whether a God who is sexist, racist, or
classist is God at all.(10) This interpretation cannot imagine a God who does
not seek to be partner with all humankind in the mending of creation. It
therefore looks at the Bible from the perspective of women struggling for this
human wholeness and finds many and unexpected echoes in stories of women, such
as those presented by Sharon Ringe, Cheryl Exum, and Drorah Setel in this
volume.(11)
Perhaps the most important limit on feminist imaginative
configuration of scriptural authority is the community of struggle, or what
Fiorenza calls "women-church". In this interpretation, communities of
oppression, where women and men are struggling for equality and mutuality,
become prisms through which God's actionin the mending of creation is to be
understood. Theological imagination exercised apart from this prophetic voice
is no longer to be considered "seriously imaginable." Along with liberation
theologies, feminist theologies have thus signaled the beginning of a paradigm
shift. This is what Sallie McFague has called a "theological revolution," and
it includes a transformation of the meaning of authority(12)
A Feminist Paradigm of Authority
The feminist paradigm of authority is a shift in
interpretive framework that affects all the authority structures in religion
and society, including the claim that scripture evokes our consent to faith and
action. The prevailing paradigm of authority in Christian and Jewish religion
is one of authority as domination. In this framework, all questions of
authority are settled with reference to the "hit parade of authority." But, as
the feminist-liberation paradigm of authority in community begins to become the
one most "seriously imaginable" to women and men of faith, a new framework
emerges that allows for multiple authorities to enrich, rather than to outrank,
one another.
Shift in Paradigm
The paradigm that no longer makes sense to feminists is
that of authority as domination. This constellation of beliefs, values,
and methods shared as a common perspective tends to predominate in church and
university and in most theological research and dialogue.(14) Consciously or
unconsciously, reality is seen in the form of a hierarchy, or pyramid.
Ordination and every other topic are viewed in terms of super—and
sub—ordination. Things are assigned a divine order, with God at the top,
men next, and so on down to dogs, plants, and "impersonal" nature. This
paradigm reinforces ideas of authority over community and refuses to
admit the ideas and persons that do not (wish to) fit into the established
hierarchies of thought or social structures.
In this framework, theological "truth" is sought through
ordering the hierarchy of doctrines, orders, and degrees. The difficulty for
women and Third World groups is that their perspectives often do not fit in the
pyramid structure of such a system of interpretation. The price of inclusion in
the theological enterprise is loss of their own perspective and culture in
order to do "good theology" as defined by "those at the top." Those who persist
in raising questions and in affirming perspectives that do not fit in the
paradigm pay the price of further marginalization. The extreme form of this is
the emergence of "heretical groups" that are forced out of the theological
conversation and thus lose the possibility of mutual development and
critique.
This paradigm of reality is an inadequate theological
perspective because it provides a religious rationale for the domination and
oppression of the weak by the oppressive political, economic, and religious
power elites. Such a view is clearly contrary to the prophetic-messianic
promise of God's welcome to all the outsiders (Luke 4:16-30). It is also an
inadequate paradigm of authority in a world so diverse that it no longer makes
sense to try to fit people into such a rigid view of theological and social
truth. Lastly, it discourages cooperation in the search for meaning because it
frames discussion as a competition of ideas in which all participants aim at
gaining the top spot and vanquishing the others.
The emerging feminist paradigm trying to make sense of
biblical and theological truth claims is that of authority as partnership.
In this view, reality is interpreted in the form of a circle of
interdependence. Ordering is explored through inclusion of diversity in a
rainbow spectrum that does not require that persons submit to the "top" but,
rather, that they participate in the common task of creating an interdependent
community of humanity and nature. Authority is exercised in community
and tends to reinforce ideas of cooperation, with contributions from a wide
diversity of persons enriching the whole. When difference is valued and
respected, those who have found themselves marginal to church or society begin
to discover their own worth as human beings.
This paradigm of reality is not just a romantic dream;
many persons, including feminists, are trying to act out of this perspective.
In fact, it is the most realistic alternative possible in a world bent on
self-destruction so that some nation or group may claim "victory." Authority as
partnership also begins to provide a theological perspective that seeks to
discover a more inclusive consensus on theological issues. This is, perhaps,
not unlike the meaning of consensus in the early Christian community, which was
a consensus in the shared story of God's love in Jesus Christ rather than
doctrinal consensus (Phil. 2:1-2). It no longer tries to get all persons to
accept one neat priority system of theological truth but, rather, welcomes all
who are willing to share in building a community of human wholeness that is
inclusive of women and men. Very importantly, from the perspective of feminist
interpretation, authority as partnership frames discussion in terms of communal
search and sharing in which all can rejoice when anyone gains a new insight
that can be shared together on the journey toward the New Creation. It is this
theoretical framework that provides a new way of approaching issues of biblical
authority.
A New Framework
This new framework is particularly important in the
ongoing discussion of whether the interpretive key for feminists should be
located within the biblical canonical tradition or outside of that tradition.
Elisabeth Fiorenza has argued that the authority to evoke consent should come
from "the experience of women (and all those oppressed) struggling for
liberation from patriarchal oppression". She rejects the correlation of a
biblical critical principle with a feminist critical principle that is key to
both Rosemary Ruether's and my own understanding of biblical authority.
Fiorenza's position is very important, as she calls for
a critical perspective that is based in the concrete life experience of women,
expressed in the political task of advocacy and liberating praxis . Fiorenza is
no longer willing to play the authority game, submitting feminist norms to
"higher" biblical authority and androcentric perceptions.( The canon and the
rules about authority that come out of a patriarchal mind-set of domination
must not decide the basis for feminist interpretation. Yet in the community
paradigm of authority, it is no longer necessary to argue that one feminist
principle must exclude or dominate another in "hit parade" fashion. All our
insights come out of our particular life experience and expertise. For this
reason, Ruether and I are far more likely to appeal to theological principles
of interpretation than to historical critical reconstruction, because we are
theologians, not New Testament scholars. But we share a common commitment to a
feminist paradigm rooted in advocacy for women as the oppressed of every
oppressed group.
In any case, authority exercised in community
makes it possible for all of us to stand together in our search for critical
principles of feminist interpretation. In this view there can be no one
archetype of unchanging basis of authority. Like the power of God's love,
authority as partnership does not coerce people into consent. The issue is no
longer to be understood as a competition between feminist critical principles
drawn from within and from outside of the canon, Rather, the issue is how
stories and actions of faithfulness can help us to celebrate and live out signs
of God's justice and shalom for all humanity. As prototype, the Bible is not a
captive of any one group or principle. Experience, tradition,biblical witness,
and intellectual research enrich each other in a rainbow of ordered (but not
subordinated) diversity, in a synergetic perspective of authority in
community.
When we take this shift in the paradigm of authority as
a starting point for understanding the clues for feminist interpretation, we
are moving toward what Bruce Birch has called "a de-absolutized canon which
allows for the honoring of ancient witness to the degree that it reveals to us
the basic truths of our faith, while at the same time honoring the power and
authority of our own experience of God."(15) In the perspective of authority in
community, the interpretive key is no longer one external or one internal
biblical key but rather a configuration of sources of faith that seek to enrich
the way God might be present with us.
The shift in feminist interpretive framework means that
we no longer need to divide feminist experience and biblical witness. As Susan
Thistlethwaite says in chapter 8, feminist method emerges as "a process of
interrogation between text and experience" that "proceeds over time". The two
belong together, as communities of struggle and faith in every age respond to
the invitation to partnership with God in the mending of creation and discover
that their lives and their understanding of the biblical witness have been
changed.
In the light of this understanding of authority as
partnership, it is no longer necessary to accept the dilemma of choice between
faithfulness to the teaching of scripture or to our own integrity as human
beings. For in a rainbow spectrum of faithful witness there will never be the
possibility of such a choice. In the midst of shared feminist community, some
will stress one thing and some another. But together we will continue to find
our way through the thickets of patriarchal ideas and structures that challenge
us to abandon the "hope that is in" us (1 Peter 3:15) for which we seek to give
account.
Notes
1. Fiorenza, In Memory of Her, p. 34.
2. See "Theology as Anticipation" in my Growth in
Partnership, pp. 87-109.
3. Tolbert, "Defining the Problem," in The Bible and
Feminist Hermeneutics, p. 120.
4. Sallie McFague, Metaphorical Theology (Fortress Press, 1982),
pp. 79-83.
5. Vincent L. Wimbush, " 'Rescue the Perishing': The
Importance of Biblical Scholarship in Black Christianity," Reflection,
8(2):10 (January 1983).
6. See Phyllis Bird's discussion of how scripture is understood as Word
of God in The Bible as the Church's Book (Westminster Press, 1982).
7. David H. Kelsey, The Uses of Scripture in Recent Theology
(Fortress Press, 1975), p. 194. See also pages 167-175.
9. McFague is building on the work of Thomas S. Kuhn,
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed., enlarged (University
of Chicago Press, 1970), p. 175.
10. From a panel presentation on Feminist Hermeneutics,
American Academy of Religion, San Francisco, December 20, 1983
(unpublished).
11. See also Phyllis Trible, Texts of Terror.
12. McFague, Metaphorical Theology, p. 82.
13. The problem of the paradigm of domination is
discussed in L. Russell, "Women and Ministry: Problem or Possibility,"
Christian Feminism, Judith L. Weidman, ed. (Harper & Row, 1984), pp.
75-92.
14. Fiorenza, "Feminist Biblical Interpretation," Christian Feminism,
p. 34.
15. Birch, "Response to Elisabeth Schüssler
Fiorenza," panel presentation on feminist herrmeneutics, American Academy of
Religion, New York, December 20, 1982 (unpublished).
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