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Interpreting the past, envisaging
the future
(Draft paper) Megan Walker October 1991
given to the
Catholic Theological Society of South Africa
Published on our website with
the necessary permissions
Introduction
The
original title of this paper, which Sue Rakoczy was supposed to give was
“Women’s role in the church of the future”. I don’t know
what she was planning to talk on but I feel that I must broaden the title out
and hence I intend speaking on how we interpret the past as well as how we
envisage the future. There are three reasons for this.
Firstly, I don’t have the necessary practical and strategic
experience and/or knowledge to be able to suggest how women can, should or will
be able to fulfill meaningful roles in the foreseeable future at the level of
structural ministerial recognition, nor at what the best ways to achieve this
are. My experience of practical feminist lobbying in the Catholic Church is
minimal!
Secondly, I’m actually not terribly optimistic about the future.
While I have a deep-seated belief that ultimately things must change, because I
have a deep belief that ultimately right will prevail, the future in this
regard is an unknown and dependent on so many things. Moreover, what do we mean
when we talk about things changing? Change means so many things - and certainly
more than having women dressed in clerical collars perfectly imitating
“Father”.
Thirdly, although it is a truism to say that those who forget the past
are doomed to repeat it, and although we do need to look to the future and not
constantly harp on the injustices of the past, I do believe that our attempt to
come to terms with the past will profoundly affect the type of future we
envisage. How we interpret the past and the nature of our accountability to it,
will inevitably determine how we deal with the future, whether we are conscious
of it or not. But the past is important not simply because it has power over us
but also because it contains resources that are important for our task today.
Resources we are often unaware of because they have been silenced and
marginalised by the dominant in the Church. Resources offered to us by past
communities of struggle as they call us to commitment and solidarity. Our
foresisters, whose memories have been co-opted and deformed to make them serve
the interests of patriarchy.
Therefore what I will seek to do in this paper is to provide a brief
overview of the ways in which patriarchy, androcentrism and sexism have
distorted the Christian tradition. I will then
look
at hermeneutical options open to women who seek to interpret their tradition in
a way that is liberating and life-giving and at the extent to which this
demands accountability to the tradition itself. Out of this I will tentatively
suggest what such a reading of the tradition has to say about the future of
women in the Church.
I
should perhaps note at the outset my dual commitments to the Christian (and
Catholic) tradition and to certain feminist principles. I am operating within
what is called a reformist feminist position which seeks to remain within the
Christian tradition as opposed to what is termed revolutionary feminism which
rejects the entire Christian tradition as hopelessly patriarchal and seeks
alternative sources of spiritual nourishment. (See McFague 1983:152ff) As such
I do not see the patriarchal distortions of the tradition as definitive but
believe that there is that within the tradition that is life-giving and that it
is ultimately redemptive. However, I recognise the need for a hermeneutic of
suspicion when approaching the tradition, for the tradition is likely to have
been distorted by the interests of the dominant. Likewise I recognise that the
critical principle of feminist theology must be the promotion of the full
humanity of women. (Ruether 1983:18)
Women in Christian tradition
It is
impossible to give a substantial overview of the role of women in Christian
tradition in one paper. However what I propose to do in the rest of this paper
presupposes some appreciation of the extent to which the tradition has
discriminated against women. The very fact that people are talking about
“Women in the Church” today implies that this is an issue and that
something has been wrong with our past understanding of the relationship
between “women” and “the Church”. However this is not
simply a matter of the Church being dominated by men and women not being
allowed to be priests or popes or whatever. It goes much deeper.
So, to
give a very brief introduction to those who are unfamiliar with such issues I
am going to refer you to a cartoon booklet entitled “A Short History of
Women in the Church”. (Walker & Wittenberg forthcoming) Although
extremely brief and in a popular format, it is nevertheless based on sound
scholarship.
What
are we to say in response to this? Firstly, we need to realise that Christian
history and development did nut drop from the sky as a God-given package deal
unaffected by social, political, economic and sexual realities. Christian
history - and before it the history of Israel -did not take place in a vacuum
in which its protagonists acted in perfect conformity to the will of God! The
Church is a human and social organisation and as such has been subject to the
same influences as have other human and social institutions. (Gustafson 1961:
Ch 1) It is one sphere, if we are to follow theorists such as Habermas, in
which the dominant in society have been able entrench their own interests under
the guise of rationalisation in order to distort the truth. (Ricoeur 1981a:
79ff)
We
can identify three social forces that were pretty influential with regard to
Christian views of women. These were:
• Patriarchy which refers to a social system in which social,
economic, political (and ecclesiastical) power is in the hands of men and in
which men rule.
• Androcentrism which refers to an attitude that identifies the
human with the male and assumes the male to be normative.
• Sexism which refers to an exclusive ordering of life by way of
gender. (King 1989:28)
Having
briefly noted the forces active on the Church we can summarise some of the
negative developments that took place with regard to women.
Firstly, while social structures and gender hierarchies varied during
the different biblical periods, there was an overwhelmingly patriarchal
influence and Israel’s growing knowledge of Yahweh and of his will for
them was understood in terms of this. Thus the development of monotheism, in
supplanting the Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Near Eastern Religion, although
it incorporated certain aspects of these deities into itself, gave rise to a
predominantly male view of God, a development that came to reinforce existing
societal patriarchy.
Secondly, while the early Jesus movement was undoubtably egalitarian
and provided quite unheard of scope for women, this did not last. The early
Christian communities gradually came to accommodate to the expectations of the
Greco-Roman world so that by the time of the Pastoral Epistles socially weaker
parties in the patriarchal household were being encouraged to submit to and
obey the socially stronger party. (Fiorenza 1983: Ch 7-8) This obviously
included women.
Thirdly, with the rise of the ascetic ideal and the influence of
gnostic ideas in the patristic period, human sexuality came to be viewed with
deep suspicion and the virginal ideal was held up as the only state that was
really pleasing to God. The views of Jerome in this regard became particularly
influential and clearly show such influences to be not only anti-sexual but
profoundly misogynist, for it is female sexuality in particular that is seen as
particularly dangerous and which must be rejected. It is women who are seen as
closer to nature and the flesh and must therefore be shunned. It is women who
come to be seen as the source of sin. As Ruether says
Women, as representatives of sexual reproduction and motherhood, are
the bearers of death, from which male spirit must flee to “light and
life.” (1983:80)
Moreover, fourthly, although women could attain a certain degree of
autonomy and could even come to be seen as male by adopting the virginal state,
they could never really achieve equality for the Church limited the extent to
which they could function as leaders. Not only could they not be ordained but
they could also not be regarded as public teachers of the Church, nor could
they write. For, according to patristic anthropology, women could never
represent the image of God as fully as man who is seen as representing the
rational and spiritual part of the self. It was Augustine who said
that
a
woman, together with her own husband, is the image of God, so that the whole
substance may be one image, but when she is referred to separately, in her
quality as helpmeet, which regards the woman alone, then she is not the image
of God, but as regards the male alone, he is the image of God as fully and
completely as when the woman too is joined with him in one. (Ruether
1983:95}
Thus
we can see that what we are concerned with is not just the fact that women have
been denied certain roles in the Church, but rather that a whole range of our
theological and anthropological understandings have been distorted and have
served to further deny the full humanity of both women and men. This can be
seen in our views of God which depict God as a patriarch legitimising
patriarchy, in our views of Christ which depict him as a reigning monarch
legitimising human rulers, in our views of Mary which show her as holding up to
women an unattainable ideal of both virginity and motherhood and as subtly (or
not so subtly) advocating female dependency, with our views of the Church as
both feminine and dependent on a dominant (male) God thereby legitimising
traditional relations of dominance and dependency. And, of course, in our views
of the human by which we really mean our views of the male as
normative.
Of
course this is not the whole story however, for there have always been
countervoices within the tradition. We need to acknowledge that the record
which we have received of women’s participation in both the political,
economic and religious affairs of Israel and of their roles in the history of
the Church is not necessarily accurate. Just as history is written by the
historical winners to legitimate the present, so our texts of faith serve not
only to record the past, but also to endorse the present. They are clearly
ideological and feminist biblical scholars such as Meyers and Fiorenza seek to
move from the text to their socio-historical context to uncover what is behind
the text to provide us with a knowledge of our foresisters who were both
victims and subjects, participating in patriarchal history. (West 1990: 3ff;
Fiorenza 1983: 27ff)
However even in the dominant texts that have come to us there are
countervoices which contain an alternative vision. The work of Phyllis Trible
in particular has shown how the Old Testament record itself contains critiques
of patriarchy and ways of imaging God which draw on mothering imagery. (West
1990: 8ff) Certainly we can see something of the alternative vision of the
early Jesus movement in the gospel accounts of Jesus and his followers which
must surely hold a privileged position in the Christian tradition. And despite
the ambiguities and misogyny associated with the rise of virginity the monastic
movement did offer a real alternative to women, albeit within definite limits,
an alternative which the Protestant Reformation, incidentally denied them even
though it did, to its credit, reassert the value of marriage and
sexuality.
Thus
the history of the women in the Church is not only one of marginalisation and
suppression, but also one of determination and struggle, much of it unrecorded.
In certain periods too women were allowed a greater scope and came to be seen
as having greater authority. For example, in the middle ages women mystics such
as Hildegarde and Mechtilde, and the various communities of Beguines, were
highly respected and offered a vision of reality that was largely lost by the
later Church and is only now being recovered. Obviously the extent of
women’s freedom was greatly influenced by a variety of social factors and
was always limited. But the fact remains that there are memories that need to
be recovered.
Interpreting the tradition
What
we have seen thus far would suggest that the Christian tradition regarding
women is at best ambiguous. While it is not necessarily irretrievably
patriarchal (there would of course be feminists who would contend this), it has
nevertheless on the whole served to distort our vision of humanity in such a
way as to deny the full humanity of women. How, we may well ask, may such a
tradition be seen as authoritative? We are left with the question of the extent
to which present formulations ought to be, or even can be, determined by that
which has gone before them. It may be helpful to look at legal paradigms of
interpretation which shed light on the different extents to which tradition is
used in interpretation.
Cady
has used Dworkin’s legal typology to shed light on how the past functions
theologically, especially in a feminist context, (Schneiders 1989:5f; West
1991: 81ff) Dworkin distinguishes between three major approaches, namely,
conventionalism, naturalism and instrumentalism. Conventionalism is an
essentially positivist approach which seeks a past precedent for the present
case. If such a precedent exists, then it is applied to the case; if not, a new
precedent is created. Such a legal position can be compared to a theological
position that holds that what the tradition says on any particular issue is
absolutely determinative. This is contrasted by the instrumentalist position
which does not allow the past to delimit decisions in any necessary way.
(Schneiders 1989:5) This position can be compared to those theologians who feel
that the past should not impose any limits on their activity.
Between these two extremes we find what Dworkin calls naturalism.
According to this position there must be continuity between past and present.
However, a precedent is not determinative in isolation but must be interpreted
within its broader moral and political context. Thus the past does constrain
the judge but it is a past that is interpreted as a whole in the light of what
is presently considered to be a just society. (West 1991:83) This position can
be compared to that of theologians who interpret the tradition in terms of the
whole experience of the Church and in the light of current perceptions of
Christian discipleship. (Schneiders 1989:6)
It is
this third, naturalist, position that I find most helpful in dealing with the
question of the scope of tradition. Whereas the conventionalist position
involves accepting the whole tradition as authoritative and thus involves a
surrender to oppressive texts, the instrumentalist one removes us from a
position of any accountability to that which has gone before us and makes the
decision about what is and what is not liberating in the tradition a fairly
arbitrary one. While the tradition is clearly problematic, it is also, I
believe, a crucial part of ourselves and contains resources that are profoundly
liberating as well as oppressive. In terms of this position, while we need to
recognise that while the tradition has distorted, and continues to distort, the
truth, we can nevertheless maintain that the tradition is also, perhaps at the
same time, disclosive of truth.
The
question remains, however, as to how we are to interpret the tradition. How do
our present commitments relate to our interpretation of the tradition? It is
here that hermeneutics becomes important.
While
the discipline of hermeneutics is usually associated with the interpretation of
written, and particularly biblical, texts and while most feminist and
liberation hermeneutics has been developed in the context of Biblical studies,
I am concerned here with a broader understanding both of hermeneutics and of
texts. Ricoeur argues that while the primary meaning of the term
‘hermeneutics’ concerns the rules required for interpreting written
documents, it may nevertheless also be seen to include the human sciences in
which a similar interpretive process occurs. (1981d: 197) For, he argues, their
object displays some of the features that constitute a text as text, and their
methodology develops the same kind of procedures as those of
text-interpretation. Therefore Ricoeur argues that what he terms meaningful
action should be considered as a text. (1981d: 197ff)
Thus
my use of the word text in this paper is not limited to the notion of text as
written document. Although the texts of the Church include written documents,
these are not the only, or even the primary means, through which its meaning is
conveyed. Instead it is a whole host of practices, actions, visual images and
orally transmitted beliefs that are often more influential, particularly in a
semi-literate context.
It
remains a fact however that it is primarily within the field of literary, and
specifically biblical, hermeneutics that the most work has been done in terms
of outlining different hermeneutical options and relating these to concerns
about ideological domination and struggles for liberation. We therefore need to
look at these.
It is
becoming increasingly clear to biblical scholars that the biblical text has a
decidedly ideological nature. It is not, in Mosala’s words “an
innocent and transparent container of a message” but is rather the product
and record of various historical struggles which are reflected in it. (West
1991: 2f) This is an insight which is particularly obvious and indisputable
when the text is viewed from a feminist perspective. For both the Old and New
Testaments are undoubtably the products of the patriarchal and androcentric
worlds which gave rise to them and reflect the views of these worlds. The
question which feminist scholars are faced with is the one put by Schneiders:
How can a text which is oppressive of women function as both foundational and
normative for its readers? (1989: 3)
West
outlines three different types of hermeneutical responses that have been made
by feminist biblical scholars and others committed to theologies of liberation.
However all feminist readings begin with a hermeneutic of suspicion. They are
also united by a common commitment to social change and an accountability to
communities of struggle beyond the academic realm. (West 1990: 2; see also
Fiorenza 1983: xxff)
The
first response is what West calls “behind the text” readings which
have their focus behind the text, in the historical and cultural world which
gave rise to the text. Such a response can be seen in the work of people such
as Meyers and Fiorenza which we have seen above who • seek through
historical and sociological research to uncover the role which women played in
the social, economic and religious affairs of the period. They also seek to
analyse the ways in which women’s roles have been marginalised by the
text. (West 1990:2ff; Fiorenza 1983:29) Such a reading does not see itself as
accountable to the text but rather to those communities of struggle behind the
text the identity of which the text attempts to distort.
The
second response, that of “reading the text” is particularly
associated with the work of Trible. For Trible what is important is the text
itself as literature and so she is concerned with interpreting it in terms of
itself. It is within this emphasis on the text that Trible distinguishes a
“depatriarchalising principle at work”. (West: 1990: 8ff) In terms of
this reading the focus is on the text itself and one is accountable to
listening to the actual text, and particularly to the countervoices within it
The third response is that of reading “in front of the text”. This
can be seen in the work of Schneiders as well as in the liberation hermeneutics
of Croatto. This approach, which I want to explore more is based on the work of
Gadamer and Ricoeur and locates the meaning of the text in the world which it
opens up for its receivers. In this, Schneiders argues, even an intrinsically
oppressive text can function in a way that is liberating for its receivers.
(West 1990:12ff; Schneiders 1989)
Such a
position recognises that we are inevitably part of a tradition. Gadamer’s
rehabilitation of the notions of prejudice, authority and tradition argued that
tradition and authority may indeed be disclosive of the truth. (West 1991: 99)
As Ricoeur has commented: “History precedes me and my reflection; I belong
to history before I belong to myself.” (198 la: 68) However, according to
Gadamer, we must reclaim the past not as that to which we abdicate our own
critical reason but as that which has the power to unmask our prejudices and
disclose new truths. (West 1991: 99) Thus there can be no objective
unconditioned knowledge outside of history; there is only historically
conditioned reality which bears within itself the possibility of self-criticism
and liberation.
Unlike
Gadamer, who held that the distanciation that occurs between the original
formation of a text and contemporary reception was a scandal, Ricoeur argues
that such distanciation is productive and is necessary for any liberatory
interpretation. Indeed it is a condition for any interpretation. For Ricoeur
the various texts of tradition assume a certain autonomy with respect to the
intention of their author, their original cultural situation and the social
conditions that affected their production, and their original addressees.
(198la: 91)
Thus
the texts become freed from their original context in such a way that they can
take on new meaning as they are interpreted in new contexts. Here we find the
possibility, according to Schneiders, “not only of multiple valid
interpretations but of the text’s exploding the very world out of which it
came and whose prejudices and errors it ineluctably expresses.” (1989: 7)
As Ricoeur says,
An
essential characteristic of a literary work, and of a work of art in general,
is that it I transcends its own psycho-sociological conditions of production
and thereby opens itself to an unlimited series of readings, themselves
situated in different socio-cultural / conditions. (1981b:
139)
Thus,
for him,
A
hermeneutics of the power-to-be thus turns itself towards a critique of
ideology, of which it constitutes the most fundamental possibility.
Distanciation, at the same time emerges at the heart of reference: poetic
discourse distances itself from everyday reality, aiming towards being as
power-to-be. (1981a: 94)
We can
see that for such a hermeneutic the real referent of the text is located in
front of the text in the world which the text opens up for people. Ricoeur says
that “what is sought is no longer an intention hidden behind the text, but
a world unfolded in front of it.” (1981a: 93) It is this world that the
text is finally about. (Schneiders 1989: 8)
It is
this world, also, that has to be appropriated by the reader. The text which has
been decontextualised by the process of distanciation becomes recontextualised
as it is appropriated by contemporary readers who explore and exploit its
surplus of meaning. (Schneiders 1989: 7) This appropriation does not involve
the projection of oneself into the text but rather receiving an enlarged self
by apprehending the proposed worlds which are the genuine object of
interpretation. (Ricoeur 1981c: 182)
It has
to be emphasised that such a hermeneutic cannot be seen in isolation from the
others outlined above. Although it clearly has a different point of departure
it can still make use of the insights of both behind and on the text
hermeneutics. However it does not see the primary focus of the text as either
behind or on the text and is therefore able to envisage the text’s
liberation both from its original context and from its own internal meaning. It
is with the lives of contemporary people with which it connects that
constitutes its primary meaning.
Such
a hermeneutic provides us with a way of dealing with tradition that both takes
tradition seriously but which is also committed to liberating us from that
which is oppressive within tradition. Indeed it recognizes that such an urge
towards liberation comes from tradition itself. However it also recognizes that
there is much within tradition that is oppressive and so its orientation is
towards the future, a future that the past is essentially orientated towards
but which we need to continue to draw out of the text.
Envisaging the future
Thus
the future is part of the past just as the past is part of the future. It is
our reading of the past that already determines how we are to envisage the
future. Our envisaging of the future is dependent on the dominant metaphors and
themes which we receive from our past. Here we can single out two inter-related
themes, namely a deep belief in God’s project of liberation and
transformation, and a preferential concern with those who are marginalised and
oppressed.
From
the formative experience of the Exodus from Egypt, through the Hebrew prophets
to the early Church’s understanding of the death and resurrection of
Christ, the theme of human and cosmic liberation has been central to the Jewish
and Christian message, which has looked for fulfillment in the future. While it
is true that such a vision has not always included women, Ruether speaks of a
feminist radicalising of the prophetic tradition which goes beyond the letter
of the prophetic message to apply its prophetic-liberating content to women.
(1983:31f) Women need to claim the resources of the past and apply them in our
contexts today. Thus the themes of Exodus, of liberation and of transformation
take on new meaning as they are applied in new contexts today.
Likewise the theme of God’s preferential love for the marginalised and
oppressed takes on a new and expanded meaning when we recognise not only that
women are the poorest of the poor and the most marginalised in society, but
also that women are marginalised and oppressed in the very Church that speaks
of God’s preferential love for the marginalised! Such a recognition
demands the development of a spirituality that enables us to find God’s
suffering presence with us. But it also demands that we remain true, in a
sense, to the margins, that we remain in solidarity with all people who suffer
any kind of oppression in any context.
Therefore the context for our continued interpretation of our Christian
tradition, and the appropriation of its liberating resources, cannot just
occur, or cannot even primarily occur, in privileged academic contexts but
needs to intersect with the lives of ordinary people, particularly women, and
particularly those women who are politically and economically oppressed. If we
wish to really take a liberationist commitment to the epistemological privilege
of the poor seriously, then we need to really listen to what the poor, and
particularly poor women, are saying. We need to take popular religion
seriously. This obviously does not mean that we will find totally liberating
interpretations in these contexts for the faith of the poor and marginalised
has clearly been distorted by the ideological interests of the dominant. It
does not mean that we suddenly drop our hermeneutic of suspicion. But it does
mean that we recognise the possibility, and even the privilege, of those on the
margins finding liberating and transformative understandings of the Christian
tradition as it intersects with their contexts. And it means that, as
theologians, we have to be prepared to enter into dialogue with them and to
recognise them as what Frostin terms our primary interlocutors. (1988:
6)
Conclusion
Thus
the future that I’m envisaging in this paper is really an extended process
rather than a final reality. And that’s okay because the process is as
important as the goal, and necessary for the goal. And the goal is distant -
it’s something like the reign of God! The Church isn’t going to
change overnight although obviously we will need to keep pressing for strategic
changes. But it is only as we appropriate the liberating resources of our
tradition, as we come to identify with the struggles of the past and with the
struggles of our sisters and brothers who are suffering and struggling around
the world, as we recognise and own God’s presence in us, that we will be
able to discern and own and keep struggling towards the liberated and
transformed future.
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Reconstruction of Christian Origins. N.Y. Crossroad.
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U. 1989. Women and Spirituality. Voices of Protest and Protest. London:
Macmillan.
MacFague, S. 1983. Metaphorical Theology. Models of God in Religious
Language. London: SCM.
Ricoeur, P. 1981b “Hermeneutics and the critique of
ideology” in Thompson, J (ed). 1981. Hermeneutics and the human
sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 63-100.
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Ricoeur. P. 1981c. “Appropriation” in Thompson, J(ed). 1981.
Hermeneutics and the human sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University
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Ricoeur, P. 1981d The model of the text: meaningful action considered as a
text" in Thompson, J (ed). 1981. Hermeneutics and the human sciences.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 197-221.
Ruether, R. 1983. Sexism and God-Talk. Towards a Feminist Theology.
London: SCM.
Schneiders, S. 1989. “Feminist Ideology Criticism and Biblical
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3-10.
Walker, M. Wittenberg, G. Forthcoming. “A Short History of Women in the
Church” in Ackermann, D, Draper, J & Mashinini, E (cds). Forthcoming.
Women Holdup Half the Sky: Women in the Church in Southern Africa.
Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications.
West,
G. 1990. “Hearing Job’s Wife: Towards a Feminist Readme of Job”.
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G. 1991. Biblical Hermeneutics of Liberation. Modes of Reading the Bible in the
South African Context. Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications.
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