Biblical Authority and Feminist Interpretation

Two main groups of feminists are active in Christianity today, calling themselves "Christian feminists" and "Biblical feminists". In general, Christian feminists are aligned with the American liberal traditions of modern scholarship and the Biblical feminists with American evangelicalism. Christian feminists are committed to the modern higher-critical (historical-critical) methods for studying Scripture, whereas the Biblical feminists usually opt for a historical-grammatical approach based upon a high view of the Bible as the inspired Word of God. Biblical feminists attempt to demonstrate that a full participation of women in the ministry of the church, with ordination, can be supported from Scripture, even though some parts of the Bible need to be limited in authority and scope.

Christian Feminist Interpretation

Feminist Principles

Feminism has an underlying principle for interpreting Scripture: "the conviction that women are fully human and are to be valued as such". This basic principle leads to two closely related principles: (1) the principle of equality (women and men are equally fully human and are to be treated as such) and (2) the principle of mutuality (based on a view of human persons as embodied subjects, essentially rational as well as autonomous and free). The principles of equality and mutuality "simply extend to women the insights of modern liberal philosophy".

Two Horizons

A "new hermeneutic" (or principle of interpretation) is at work in the feminist interpretation of the Bible. Feminist Margaret A. Farley claims that "Interpretation of sacred scriptures... is precisely the bringing together of the horizons of a far-reaching tradition [i.e. scriptures as text] and present life situations". The "present life situations" cause feminists to "bring to scripture what seems to be a measure for its meaning and authority....". So for Christian feminists, contemporary experience determines the meaning and authority of the Bible.

Selectivity

The feminist "new hermeneutic" brings to the Bible a "principle of selectivity". Certain portions of the Bible may be selected as authoritative, namely those that agree with present-day social, philosophical, and cultural norms or "present life situations". In the words of Phyllis Trible, the "principle of selectivity" may be seen in "the separation of descriptive and culturally conditioned texts from prescriptive and existentially valid ones". So not all scripture is authoritative. Trible states precisely, "... feminists employ canons within the canon". That is, if Scripture's authority is a partnership between text and present experience, "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". Thus, binding authority is not anchored in the Bible at all.

Suspicion

Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, one of the foremost American Christian feminists, insists on "suspicion rather than acceptance of biblical authority". She asserts that "... a feminist critical hermeneutics of suspicion places a warning label on all biblical text: Caution! Could be dangerous to your health and survival". This shift in authority from the Bible to its readers (who for feminists are women) means in feminist theology to "denounce all texts and traditions that perpetuate and legitimate oppressive patriarchal structures in the 'word of God' for contemporary communities and people". Leading radical feminist Rosemary Radford Ruether insists that only and nothing but "women's experience" "can be used to judge scripture and theological traditions". The experience of men is excluded. Human experience as the combined experience of women and men is also removed. What counts in judging the Bible (and theology) is "women's experience" alone.

These are representative examples of Christian feminists of the modern liberal theological tradition. They abandon the Bible as an authoritative transcultural norm for the life of faith, reassign authority from the Bible to the modern (woman) reader, adopt a "new hermeneutic" or method of Biblical interpretation with the two horizons of past text and present culture (the latter carrying decisive authority). They follow a "principle of selectivity" to decide what parts of the Bible can be used today as "word of God" and what parts are descriptive of past situations alone, culturally conditioned, and therefore offer no guidance to the faith of the church. They accept only "canons within the canon" of the Bible, to select the appropriate parts of scripture for feminist interests and purposes. Christian feminists would argue that the Bible contains both truth and error. Truth is what promotes Christian feminism and error is what speaks of the extensive patriarchy of the Old and New Testaments.

It should be clear that the Christian feminist does not look upon the Bible as the "Word of God". In harmony with liberal theological tradition, the Christian feminist sees the Bible as made up of various pieces of literature (not Scripture with a capital letter) of a culture foreign to us with its own value systems. The reader of today must enter into the value system of a literary work, in this case the Biblical text, but "that is different from saying that the reader must adopt that value system". Rather, we may compare our beliefs with those of the literary work, affirm those beliefs if they are the same as ours, and even reconsider ours if the values differ somewhat. But if the value system of the Biblical literature is radically different from that of today, "our ideology takes precedence over the ideology of the [biblical] literature. We cannot be transformed by our reading". This issue of biblical authority remains a core problem in the feminist reading of the Bible.

Biblical Feminist Interpretation

In contrast to Christian feminists are those who refer to themselves as "Biblical feminists". Rather than follow theological liberalism, they are firmly entrenched in American evangelicalism, holding to a high view of the Bible as the inspired Word of God in its entirety.

Authority or Interpretation?

Biblical feminists not only support open roles for women in all lines of work in the church, including the ordination of women in ministry, but disagree with their fellow evangelicals who advocate more historical or traditional roles for women. Most evangelicals say the heart of the matter of women in ministry is Biblical authority. Biblical feminists argue that the crux is not Biblical authority but Biblical interpretation and application. If the Bible is rightly interpreted, they say, then all obstacles for open roles for women in all lines of church work and ministry are removed.

If interpretation (hermeneutics) is the key issue, what new procedures and methods do evangelicals employ to teach their new interpretation of the difficult passages of the New Testament? What rationale do they provide for it? Questions regarding principles for interpretation and Scriptural authority are more basic than the broader role of women in the church or home. The reasons for this are clear. The evangelical has a high view of Scripture, supports its full inspiration, accepts its authority for shaping faith and life, and cannot divest himself or herself of the transcultural and perennially significant. How then do Biblical feminists overcome the impasse between the Biblical concept of the role of women and the modern aspirations of feminists? Here are some of their representative proposals and suggestions.

Two Horizons

A number of Biblical feminists argue for the "new hermeneutic" approach of the Christian feminists, with its two horizons of text and reader. They affirm that the "second horizon" of the reader in one's present socio-cultural context is a "needed corrective to traditional evangelical hermeneutics". On the other hand, other evangelicals are strongly opposed to the concept of the two horizons and their merging as a sound hermeneutical enterprise. Philosopher and literary critic E. D. Hirsch distinguished between "meaning" (the idea that was meant by its author) and "significance" (the relationship between the text's meaning and the reader). According to Hirsch, the human writer who received God's revelation produced the revelation in what he wrote, the Biblical text. By appropriate methods, the interpreter needs to discover the very meaning of the text, the author's single idea represented in the text. R. C. Sproul, a well known evangelical, argues for "an objective understanding of Scripture" in which the interpreter of the Bible reads "without mixing in his own prejudices".

Culture-Conditioned

Biblical feminists make a distinction between the "permanent" and the "culture-conditioned". Numerous evangelicals (and liberals alike) have made a distinction between timeless truth and the instruction to a local congregation (such as the instruction of Paul in 1 Tim 2:11-15; 1 Cor 11:5-15; 14:34-35), which is said to be "time-conditioned," "cultural," "culturally conditioned," "limited to a particular situation," "historically conditioned," "culturally relative," or "descriptive" and, therefore, without doctrinal authority for the church of today. Therefore, the troublesome passages of the Bible for the ordination of women today are said to be outside of that Biblical teaching that is "transcultural," "permanent," "universal," "didactic," and "normative," applicable to all times and all situations in the church. In other words, they believe these passages are in some sense or other limited in scope and meaning for today, perhaps applying only to the home and marriage. Recognizing that there are culturally conditioned parts in the Bible but that the relevant New Testament texts on women do not belong to them, evangelicals who disagree with the Biblical feminists point out several pitfalls in the "culture-conditioned" approach. Distinguishing between the culture-conditioned and the transcultural is highly subjective and arbitrary, they point out, and makes the interpreter the judge of the New Testament. Modern culture becomes the norm, and Biblical faith is made relative to the modern norm. This reversal of norms and absolutes has led liberal scholarship to lose faith in the Bible, in miracles, in the bodily resurrection of Jesus, in the literal return of Christ, and so on.