-
4. For the Sake of the Truth Dwelling among Us: Emerging Issues in Feminist Biblical Interpretation
- Augsburg Fortress Publishers
- Chapter
- Additional Information
4 For the Sake of the Truth Dwelling among Us Emerging Issues in Feminist Biblical Interpretation The second letter of John—the only writing of the New Testament addressed to a woman—was written “for the sake of the truth that dwells among us and will be with us forever.” Biblical interpretation as theological interpretation is concerned with the divine presence dwelling among the people of God in the past and in the present. Feminist Christian biblical interpretation makes explicit that such divine truth and revelatory presence is also found among women who are the “invisible” part of the people of God. It makes explicit that the receivers and proclaimers of such revelation are not solely men but also women. It thus seeks to interrupt the theological silence and ecclesial invisibility of women so that God’s grace and truth may reveal itself among us in its fullness. The critical rereading of the Bible in a feminist key and from women’s perspectives is uncovering lost traditions and correcting mistranslations, peeling away layers of androcentric scholarship, and rediscovering new dimensions of biblical symbols and theological meanings. In Bible study groups, sermons, and seminars, women are rediscovering our biblical heritage, realizing that this heritage is part of our power today. Feminist scholars seek to explore systematically the theological questions and hermeneutical issues raised by women in biblical religion. Such a rediscovery of women’s biblical heritage on a popular and academic level is made possible by two basic shifts in how we see the world and reality and in how we see the function of biblical texts and interpretations. Such paradigm shifts are, on the one hand, the shift from an androcentric to a feminist perception of the world and, on the other hand, the shift from an apologetic focus on biblical authority to a feminist articulation of contemporary women’s experience and struggle against patriarchal oppression in biblical religion. 71 72 Changing Horizons From an Androcentric to a Feminist Interpretive Framework The resurgence of the women’s movement in the sixties revived not just women’s political struggle for civil rights and equal access to academic institutions but also brought forth feminist studies as a new intellectual discipline. In all areas of scientific and intellectual knowledge, courses and research projects have developed that seek to expand our knowledge of women’s cultural and historical contributions, as well as to challenge the silence about us in historiography, literature, sociology, and all the human sciences. Such feminist scholarship is compensatory as well as revolutionary. It has inaugurated a scientific revolution that engenders a scholarly paradigm shift from an androcentric—male centered—worldview and perspective to an inclusive feminist comprehension of the world, human life, and history. While androcentric scholarship takes man as the paradigmatic human being , feminist scholarship insists on the reconceptualization of our intellectual frameworks in such a way that they become truly inclusive of all human experience and articulate male experience as just one particular experience and perception of reality. Feminist scholarship therefore throws into question our dominant cultural mind-set articulated in male generic language, classical texts, scholarly frameworks, and scientific reconstructions that make invisible and marginalize women. This androcentric mind-set perpetuates the worldview and consciousness that women’s experiences and cultural contributions are less valuable, less important, or less significant than men’s. Feminist studies challenge male symbolic representations, androcentric language, and the habitual consciousness of two sex classes as a “naturally given” and classificatory fact in our language and thought-world. They point to the interaction between language and society, sexual stereotypes and culture, gender and race, as social constructs and political legitimizations. Sexism, racism, imperialism, and militarism constitute different aspects of the same language of oppression in our society. However, it must be noted that feminist studies articulate the feminist paradigm in different ways and with the help of varying philosophical perspectives. While liberal scholarship, for example, often seeks to show that women were and are equal to men without critically reflecting on the malecentered framework underlying such an argument, feminists coming from an existentialist or a sociology of knowledge approach use as their main heuristic category androcentrism or phallocentrism. While socialist feminists use as their key analytical category the relationship between social class and gender as determinant of women’s condition in society, third world feminists insist on the relationship between racism, colonialism, and sexism as defining women’s oppression and struggle for liberation. Such a variety...