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The Liberation of Christology from Patriarchy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2024
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The doctrine of Christ should be the most comprehensive way that Christians express their belief in redemption from all sin and evil in human life, the doctrine that embraces the authentic humanity and fulfilled hopes of all persons. The theological categories adopted by early Christianity to define the doctrine of Christ—early Christology, in other words—would seem to be inclusive of women. And yet, of all Christian doctrine, it has been the doctrine of Christ that has been most frequently used to exclude women from full participation in the Christian Church. How is this possible?
Early Christianity used the word ‘logos’ to define that presence of God which has become incarnate in Jesus Christ. This term drew on a long tradition of religious philosophy. In Greek and Hellenistic Jewish philosophy, the divine Logos was the means by which the transcendent God came forth in the beginning to create the world. The Logos was simultaneously the immanence of God and the ground of creation. Through the Logos God created the world, guided it, was revealed to it and reconciled the world to God.
The Logos was particularly related to the rational principle in each human soul. By linking the term Christ, the Messiah, through which God redeemed the world, to the Logos, early Christianity prevented a split between creation and redemption threatened by early gnosticism. The God revealed in Christ was the same God who created the world in the beginning, the authentic ground of creation manifest in fulfilled form over against the alienation of creation from its true being.
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- Copyright © 1985 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
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13 Luke 1:46–55.
14 Matt. 27:56; Mark 15:40; Lk. 23:49, John 19:25. John alone has the tradition of the mother of Jesus at the cross, as well as the disciple John, but he too affirms the presence of Mary Magdalene there. In the resurrection traditions, Matthew says that the angel told the women to announce it to the disciples. Luke says only that they told it to the ‘eleven and to all the others’, and Mark says that they told no one of their experience. John has the most extended account of Mary Magdalene's presence, saying that first she told Peter and John of the empty tomb and then later she spoke to the risen Lord and was told by him to impart her revelation to the brethren: Matt. 28:1–8; Mark 16:1–8; Lk. 24:1–9; John 20:1–18. The gnostics elaborated the gospel stories of Mary Magdalene's role in the resurrection, and made her a key figure in interpreting the message of the resurrection to the male apostles. For the gnostics, this also affirms women's place in apostolic ministry and teaching. See the Gospel of Mary, in the Nag Hammadi Library in English, Robinson, John et al, San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1977, pp. 471–474Google Scholar.
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22 The Montanist women prophets were accused of abandoning their husbands, which suggests that they shared the view of the Acts of Paul and Thecla that women converts to Christ transcend their marital obligations. Gnostic women also believed that spiritual rebirth transcended marriage and procreation in a new state of androgynous existence. Both groups supported women in leadership, following the early Christian traditions of a leadership of apostle, prophets and teachers. See Fiorenza, ‘Word, Spirit and Power’, op. cit., p. 42, and Pagels, Elaine, The Gnostic Gospels, New York: Random House, 1979, pp. 48–69Google Scholar.
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26 Eusebius, Oration on Constantine, 10.7.
27 The fullest development of the union of mystical and millennialist theology, together with the affirmation of sexual equality, is found in the theology of the Anglo‐American sect, the Shakers, or the United Society of Christ's Second Appearing. See especially their Bible, The Testimony of Christ's Second Appearing, United Society: 1856.
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