In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

27 1 Attending to Word and Flesh The wisdom recovered and developed by diverse feminist theologians makes it possible to interpret the incarnation inclusively, as extending beyond the historical body of Jesus. Christ is incarnate in a multiplicity of bodies, wherever the hungry are fed, justice is pursued, and love is shared. Careful attention must be given to the particularity of Jesus’ historical body, including his maleness, but this particularity initiates a wider incarnation of Christ wherever liberation, justice, compassion, and Wisdom appear. Christ is present in diverse bodies today, always marked by the particularity of multiple differences . Feminist and womanist theologians have found a remarkable variety of creative ways to make Christology more inclusive of women, indeed, of all persons in their embodied differences. Still, the poetic and traditional language of the incarnation in the prologue to the Gospel of John beckons: “the Word became flesh and lived among us.” Both the language of logos and the language of sarx were shaped and received within a patriarchal and androcentric context, and so they must be handled with caution. That context has distorted Christian anthropology, theology, and especially Christology through an androcentric interpretation of both word and flesh. But instead of rejecting the traditional language of the incarnation, of “Word” and “flesh,” in favor of more innovative gestures of inclusion, new interpretations of these key terms are both possible and necessary. Without careful attention to the evocative symbols of “Word” and “flesh,” to the way they have functioned to exclude women, and to the inclusive possibilities latent within these very terms, we risk leaving a narrow incarnation intact. If we develop our inclusive Christologies too quickly in other directions, we risk conceding traditional language—that the word is 28 FLESH MADE WORD indeed consubstantial with “the Father,” for instance; or that Logos is ideally reflected in the perfect rationality and control of a male ruler; or that the male flesh of the historical body of Jesus is “more noble” than other flesh. Without attention to the Johannine language of word and flesh, and the possibilities for locating difference within these very terms, our understanding of the incarnation remains partial and incomplete. This language remains a powerful site for feminist intervention. It is worth contemplating, therefore, the Word who became flesh and lived among us. Inclusive possibilities emerge from inhabiting the traditional language of Word and flesh. In the writings of the Hellenistic Jewish philosopher Philo, logos resonates with the philosophical terms of both Sophia-Wisdom and Nous-Mind, making the logos present to some degree in each person through creation and particularly through reason.1 When logos is translated as “Word,” it functions as a multivalent and suggestive symbol for Christians . It is the Word of God spoken at creation, incarnate in Jesus, written in scripture, proclaimed in the gospel, preached and interpreted by unfolding traditions. The Christian “Word” is ambiguously both a person and a text, and it encompasses both speech and writing.2 As such, it carries a rich range of meaning. Of particular interest is the way in which Word can signify what we frequently name “the written word,” or writing itself: in scripture and in the act and production of writing. In Paul’s writings, “flesh” (sarx) has the connotation of sinful human nature (Rom 8:4-8, Gal 5:16ff.), which has been the source of much suspicion of the body in Christian history. But in the prologue to John’s gospel, flesh indicates the humanity assumed by the Word and positively connotes the goodness of the human body. Against docetic interpretations of Christ, John insists on the fleshiness of the divine Word. The Word was not transformed into flesh (so that it was no longer divine Word—that is, became mere flesh), but rather became human, in the flesh.3 “Flesh” here functions metonymically to signify the entire human being, but with a particular emphasis on the goodness of Jesus’ body as a fully embodied, fully human divine being. That embodiment included his male sex and sexuality, along with his other particular bodily characteristics of race, ethnicity, size, language, and so on. 1 See Rosemary Radford Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology (Boston: Beacon, 1983), 124–26; and Elizabeth A. Johnson, She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse (New York: Crossroad, 1997), 97–99. 2 See David Tracy, “Writing,” in Critical Terms for Religious Studies, ed. Mark C. Taylor (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 383–93...

Share