Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza:
Critique of Biblical Patriarchy

Feminist ideology: resistance to any text, ideology or social structure that privileges men and marginalizes women.
Feminist readers: "ideology critics who undo textual hierarchies by reading against the grain, that is, by exposing the world of the text as an effect of rhetoric rather than as a picture of reality." [Vanhoozer, Is there a Meaning, 168]

Two Models... and a Third

1. Text as Source of Timeless Principles that Bring Liberation

Schussler Fiorenza rejects any approach that locate timeless principles in the text. With such an approach the goal is to extract timeless, universal, egalitarian principles from a historical, particular, often-patriarchal text.

• does the NT assume/prescribe/challenge patriarchy?
  Indicate what evidence in the following texts might support one of these three categories:

• to what extent is the New Testament shaped/marked/influenced by first century social hierarchies?
• is it possible/legitimate/desirable to rise above biblical patriarchy and to rewrite NT ethical teachings for contemporary non-patriarchal societies? Correspondingly, are modern-but-still-patriarchal societies (e.g., in the developing world) free to take NT patriarchy at face value?

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2. Text as Window Revealing Long Lost Moments of Liberation

Schussler Fiorenza advocates an approach that strives to peer through the text in order to get behind its patriarchy that encrusts the biblical text to recover the earliest egalitarian communities.

• did an early egalitarian phase of the church rapidly give way to the reinstitution of patriarchy, in the interest of social respectability?
• has the history of women in the early churches been lost? If so, can it be recovered? (Cf. Acts of Paul and Thecla)
• did Paul affirm the equality of women in theory (Gal 3:28), only to reaffirm patriarchal values in practice (1 Cor 14; 1 Tim 2)?
• can Christians identify the locus of authority in "the personally and politically reflected experience of oppression and liberation" (Hays, 275).

3. Text as a Moral Trajectory Moving God's People Toward Liberation

• does the NT witness on slavery, taken as a whole, point the church toward emancipation?
  E.g., Gal 3:28; Philemon; Eph 6:5-9; Col 3:22-4:1, etc.
• if so, might not the NT witness on gender, taken as a whole, similarly point the church toward egalitarianism?
• are there hints and clues, even in patriarchal texts, that point toward egalitarianism?
  E.g., 1 Cor 11:11-12
• are there implications of the Gospel, understood holistically, that undermine social structures of dominance and coercion?
  E.g., Luke 1:46-55 (reversal); 4:18-19 (liberation); Matt 20:25-28 (servanthood); 1 Cor 12:4-31 (Spirit-gifting of all); Acts 2:1-12 and 1 Tim 2:15 (reversal of the curse)