Jesus: Miriam's Child, Sophia's Prophet, by Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza:

...Instead, the brilliant and imaginative Origen was pre-or-thodox...

...Surgically removed was any traditional understanding of incarnation, of Trinity, of submission to the will of the Father, of the guiding inspiration of the Holy Spirit, of basic trust in the tradition, of appreciation of the love and joy that has informed the Christian life throughout the centuries in spite of it all...

...She finds that the cultural sex/gender system operates as an unexamined assumption even in the work of many feminist theologians and scholars, especially those who celebrate a feminine dimension in God or in Jesus, or who try to highlight the feminine contribution of Mary...

...Dennis M. Doyle About ten years ago, soon after the publica-tion of In Memory of Her, I saw Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza walking across a hotel lobby at a convention...

...She wants to uproot this sex/gender system by grounding her own vision within the context of emancipatory movements throughout history that confront structures of domination and exclusivity and seek to replace them with democratic and egalitarian practices...

...Readers should not allow Schussler Fiorenza's dazzling insights and inventive terminology to disguise the limitations in her approach...

...As played out in history, the council's boundaries left room for many different orthodox ways of conceiving of Jesus...

...She differentiates her vision from Marxism by claiming her own to be more radically inclusive in terms of gender, race, and sexual orientation, and by stressing the potentially positive roles of religion and of ideological constructs...

...I replied that I had found it to be just about right, though if I had been more honest I would have said only that I felt less uncomfortable with it on second reading...

...She moves back behind orthodox teachings to reconsider Christianity at its core, as though she wishes to conceptually travel back in time to erase blemishes that have scarred the faith throughout the history of its in-culturation...

...Chalcedon was an attempt, or so many interpreters have argued, to raise the status of all humanity by emphasizing the humanity of Jesus...

...Recognizing her face from the book's back cover, I hurried over and introduced myself...

...My personal visitation with the author draws me to seek a fuller account, one that acknowledges both of our places at Wisdom's table...

...To this end she shifts her focus from the councils to the Gospels...

...But most important, she charges that by associating fatherhood with God and motherhood with humanity Chalcedon contributes to the gendering of divinity and the legitimation of the cultural sex/gender system...

...She claims such an approach allows her to expose the structures of domination underlying texts in order to assess the effects of those structures on women and other oppressed people...

...At moments I felt as though the table set by Divine Wisdom were an operating table, and that the heart of my faith was being cut out without anesthesia...

...at the same time, however, no Christology today will be adequate that does not take seriously her unsettling challenge to assess critically how social and political forces have shaped Christian doctrine and how those doctrines impact the lives of women and others.s of women and others...

...I am glad that I had this "memory of her" as I read Schiissler Fiorenza's latest offering, which explores feminist liberation understandings of Jesus...

...I have come to read Schussler Fiorenza's work similarly to the way that I read the third-century Origen of Alexandria...

...As she uses the story of Mary visiting Elizabeth to frame her book, so I used the context of an affirming personal encounter (with Elisabeth, no less...

...Such projects, Schussler Fiorenza argues, inevitably buy into and reinforce the very presuppositions about masculinity and femininity that lie at the root of the problem...

...My impression is that Schussler Fiorenza wants to clear the decks of orthodoxy in order to go about her interpretations of Scripture unburdened, and so she assembles a host of "reasons" to jettison the most classic of Christian formulations...

...That's more than I can say for a lot of people, and it's really all that I'm asking...

...That encounter underlined for me her claim that she wants her positions neither to be taken as the only "correct" ones nor to be dismissed relativistically, but rather "to stage a critical conversation and public debate among those gathered around the Christological table set by Divine Wisdom...

...she interrupted...

...But the book is more than this...

...She offers radically inclusive reinterpretations of Mary as a young pregnant woman struggling against victimization, of Jesus as Wisdom's spokesperson, of the theology of the cross as an indictment of imperial power, and of the Resurrection as a vindication of the struggle for a better world...

...Traditional doctrines that she treats as rhetorical constructs express the meanings and truths upon which many Christians base their lives...

...Delegates of the emperor prompted the council fathers to issue a statement settling the matter...

...Schussler Fiorenza's method is intentionally "unsettling...

...Although she raises important questions about Chalcedon and gender, she too easily dismisses the hard-won theology of that council...

...She deconstructs Christian doctrines in order to reconstruct, in dialogue with scriptural sources, new visions that she hopes will prove more fruitful for women and for anyone who is oppressed...

...Chalcedon came about because disagreements over the faith were dividing the fifth-century church and causing discord throughout the Roman Empire...

...I recall her demeanor as animated and warm as she said, "At least you' ve read it...

...I told her how I had first skipped ahead to the epilogue about the ekklesia of women and concluded that she was too radical for me, but that after starting over at the beginning and working my way through I found that the epilogue...

...Was not radical enough...

...By proclaiming that Jesus is one person with two natures, Chalcedon set broad boundaries ruling out interpretations that deny either Jesus' divinity or Jesus' humanity...

...In contrast to the conventional reading of Chalcedon, Schussler Fiorenza offers an alternative based on a feminist "hermeneutics of suspicion...

...Because the council issued a long and stern list of anathemas, she interprets the doctrine as exclusive...

...Finding my place at the table helped me somewhat to digest Schussler Fiorenza's deconstruction of the declarations of the Council of Chalcedon (a.d...

...By starting over, as it were, from scratch, she subordinates the history of Christian doctrine to her own Utopian vision of egalitarian emancipation...

...to frame my reception of her book...

...Also removed was any belief in the superiority of Jesus, for such, she holds, would be anti-Semitic and anti-egalitarian...

...He dealt with many issues before they were settled...

...And you' ve taken it seriously...

...With no acknowledgment of the emperor's role in preserving peace in the empire, she finds the very fact of imperial involvement damning...

...Because the word oikonomia (management of household) plays a key role in the" Greek text, she concludes that the council reinforced patriarchal structures of domination...

...Origen was not a heretic, though his work was later condemned...

...Left in place is a Jesus movement, insofar as it is emancipatory for women and others, and some stories, many by and about women, that provide fertile ground for nurturing the imaginations of those committed to liberation...

...She views doctrines not as expressions of truths but as rhetorical strategies that often hinder movements of liberation...

...Schussler Fiorenza argues that the belief that human beings can be essentially differentiated into "male" and "female" on a biological or other basis is a dualistic and oppressive discursive construct...

...Although this last charge merits serious consideration, I do not find her cursory arguments convincing...

...She sensed my hesitancy...

...In accord with my own doctrinal presuppositions, I do not think that one could use her deconstructive starting point to arrive at anything like an adequate Christology...

...451), declarations which I interpret as inclusive, inspired, and normative for all Christians...