A review and disability-oriented response to Beth Allison Barr, The Making of Biblical Womanhood:
How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press,
2021.
At the start of a
graduate school class titled “The History of Christian Doctrine,” the professor
apologized for the title, saying that “doctrine” probably sounded dull. The
class wasn’t, thanks to his guidance, but it’s a reminder that whether we like
it, whether we find it exciting or dull, history is there, whether we like it or not,
especially when it’s full of surprises that we’d prefer to forget. And as this book’s historical survey of a
theological topic progresses, we find out that there is much that’s been
forgotten, thereby tilting the view that many have of this history.
As I would tell my
history class, let’s begin at the beginning: the origins of patriarchy. Barr starts
with the story of a church that refused to hire a man as church secretary. He
was in need of employment and had the desired skills. The reasoning had nothing
to do with ability and everything to do with the idea that a man was above such
work.
Behind this “reasoning”
is a cultural history: as agriculture emerged, so did structured communities,
along with designations of rank and status, marking some people as more
worthy—whether of authority, certain kinds of work, or other elements of social
identity. As cultures develop, such notions often are conflated with religious
belief, and over time, become a hermeneutical standard, a move over time that is generally with the loss
of their origins. Generations of students, including myself, have written about
the imago Dei and social structure and now Barr joins us, noting that patriarchy was a result of
human sin. It exists, but is not God’s desire.
A careful reading will
reveal that many biblical passages and stories undermine, rather than support,
patriarchy. The Torah has many provisions for an inclusive society, one that
doesn’t promote rank and status. And then there’s Paul—a survey of history
shows that in the early and medieval church, his writings were hardly ever
used to support the status quo. Paul was writing to teach early Christians to live
counter-culturally in their Roman world, and how to resist the patriarchy of
the day. (With serendipity in “full” mode, the Alban newsletter of July 18,2022 notes, “In Scripture, we can see the
connection between behavior and culture when we reflect on the Apostle Paul’s
comments . . . . a transformative vision for a Christ-centered culture by advocating
for new ways of behaving within the Christian community.”)
Abetting our assumptions
about patriarchy are vagaries of translation. Few people read the preface to
translations. If one did, they would learn that King James sought to support
male, royal authority—and many recent translations refer to maintaining that
tradition. Many modern Christians thus hear in Paul a masculine authority, such
as wives should “be subject.” Paul’s original audience would have heard a
command to love as Christ did, to efface the self, and not to regard the family
as a vehicle for personal gain.
Compounding these
assumptions, we are reminded that translation is not a science and not literal.
So readers often lose track of who is speaking and who is addressed. Moreover,
the letters we have are one side of a chain of correspondence. Paul is often addressing
what was happening (i.e., “women be silent”) and reacting in disbelief
(“What!”) to offer correction. As Barr points out, Paul had reason to challenge
such accretions: “In a world that didn’t accept the word of a woman as a valid
witness, Jesus chose women as witnesses for his resurrection” (87). It should
also be noted that Paul describes himself as a mother, much as Jesus did, and
mentions women prominently among the leaders of churches.
Many translations have also wreaked havoc on gender. Inclusive readers are hardly a recent invention: in the first chapter of Genesis, a human (inclusive gender) is created, אדם ('adam). This was rendered in the Vulgate as homo/hominem (an inclusive gender term) and then as man in English. At that time, "man" was gender inclusive, but over time, it was often taken to apply to males only.
M. I should probably not venture into the hopefully unintentional
hypocrisy of those who tell us that “man” is inclusive but then act as if it’s
“male” only. An example of this is 1 Timothy 3:1–13, where the Greek uses
non-gender-specific terms, but many English translations use a series of
male-specific pronouns—none of which are in the Greek text.
Aside from the gender
concerns raised in this book, I am (unsurprisingly) interested in the parallels
to the argument that prevailing views are accepted as cultural foundations, and
in turn used to justify theological positions. This is part of what lies behind
Theodore Hiebert’s ideas that we have
misunderstood God’s diversity due to mistranslation and cultural assumptions.
In the realm of disability, we have a Gospel example:
in John 9, Jesus converses with a blind man, treating him as a real person, and
then tells those around that their notion that disability is the result of sin
is all wrong. The extension of this story also illustrates why we need a social
model of disability: the leaders refuse to acknowledge that the man is whole,
and prefer to argue with his parents than to hear the man himself. (This does
not exhaust the material available in this direction).
In a similar approach,
Jenifer Barclay’s The Mark of Slavery
argues that the legacy of slavery created much of the modern language of
disability and influenced theological views which have survived even though
slavery has not (at least legally). As our industrial-technical age has
emphasized reading and similar technical competencies, society has singled out
conditions such as dyslexia and some neurodiversity in a way that previous ages
did not. This parallels a change of reading the λογος (logos) of John as “The Word” to be understood and
given a fixed, specific understanding, one that departs from the classical idea
of principle, grounds, reasoning, and patterns.
In the process Barclay follows, these become stigmatized as disabilities rather
than different approaches or understandings, and we lose much of the richness
of the Gospel stories.
I also remember a remark
from one person that in many ways, the oldest human disability is being female.
It’s hardly surprising, then, that this book is needed--and that there is one more
matter to address. In closing, Barr writes about the 1995 movie “The Usual
Suspects,” which, near its end, has the line “The greatest trick the devil ever
pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.” She begs to disagree, saying
that the greatest trick was convincing Christians that oppression is godly
(172). As Matthew 23.27 reminds us, the harshest words of Jesus were to
self-appointed guardians of privilege and rank, of systems that give some
people power over others.
Disclaimer: I borrowed this book from the Indianapolis Public Library, once again pushing some generously-compensated CEO toward having to consider whether he will have to cancel a subscription to heated car seats or something similar. A nice feature of electronic borrowing for people like me is that the book is returned automatically at the end of the lending period.
