Reconsidering the Maleness of Jesus -- By: Micah Daniel Carter

Journal: Journal for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood
Volume: JBMW 13:1 (Spring 2008)
Article: Reconsidering the Maleness of Jesus
Author: Micah Daniel Carter


Reconsidering the Maleness of Jesus

Micah Daniel Carter

Pastor, Mackville Baptist Church
Mackville, Kentucky
Adjunct Professor of Theology and Philosophy, Campbellsville University
Campbellsville, Kentucky

Introduction

Today a Christology which elevates Jesus’ maleness to ontologically necessary significance suggests that Jesus’ humanity does not represent women at all. Incarnation solely into the male sex does not include women and so women are not redeemed.1

Against several erroneous Christological proposals, the orthodox definition for Christology found in the statement of the Council of Chalcedon (451) provides a careful defense for the assertion that Jesus Christ was both God and man.2 The deity and humanity of Jesus, Chalcedon demonstrates, must be affirmed simultaneously without the devaluation of either fact related to the person of Jesus Christ. Although such an important affirmation has been retained in orthodox Christology over the centuries, neither the language nor the concepts of the Chalcedonian definition have gone unchallenged.

One such challenge in contemporary Christology arises from feminist theologians.3 As feminists reflect on the person of Christ in light of their gendered experience, new insights and theological explorations into the meaning of Jesus the Christ for the lives of twentieth-century women and men are emerging.4 In Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen’s estimation, the questions posed by feminist theologians with regard to Christology are illuminating: How can a “Son of God” be a Savior and representative of God’s sons and daughters? How does Jesus’ “maleness” relate to the other half of humankind? Is God the Son masculine or feminine or beyond? Kärkkäinen states, “The image of Christ is ambiguous for many contemporary women because it has served both as the source of life and as the legitimator of oppression.”5

For feminists, the inevitable stumbling block for a Christology inclusive of women is Jesus the man, God incarnate in a male persona.6 Kathryn Greene-McCreight recognizes that orthodox Christology, which maintains the biblical fact of the maleness of Jesus, “poses difficulties for feminist theology insofar as feminist theology shares in modern theology’s difficulty with the ‘scandal of particularity.’” She adds, “The notion that the one eternal God, creator of hea...

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