Journal: Eikon
Volume: EIKON 01:2 (Fall 2019)
Article: Recovering The Communion Of Persons: How Hebrew Anthropology Counters Aristotelian Thought Concerning Male And Female Roles
Author: Katie McCoy

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Eikon 1:2 (Fall 2019) p. 45

Recovering The Communion Of Persons:
How Hebrew Anthropology Counters Aristotelian Thought Concerning Male And Female Roles

Katie McCoy

Katie McCoy is an Assistant Professor of Theology in Women’s Studies at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary

I.

When Elizabeth Cady Stanton first published The Woman’s Bible in 1895, she attempted to remedy what she perceived to be a religiously justified inequity: the inferior role of women. The first-wave feminist matriarch lamented that, despite woman’s equal position and glory in Genesis 1, she was a mere “afterthought” in Genesis 2.1 Stanton pronounced her verdict: “[T]he Bible in its teachings degrades Women from Genesis to Revelation.”2 Thus began the effort to elevate women in society by unfettering them from religious — specifically biblical — constraints. Succeeding generations followed Stanton’s lead. They blamed the Bible (or at least how the Bible was interpreted and applied) for imprisoning women in a voiceless, powerless role. The emancipation of women was but a doctrinal novelty away.

Like their forebears, contemporary critics of the church’s historic interpretation of male headship in the family and the church claim that Scripture does not consign women to a lesser role. They’re right…to a point.

We need not speak at length of the contrived ceilings placed over women in the name of doctrine, of the Mary Astells who were forbidden to study theology3, or the Lucy Stones who were barred from academic debate because “St. Paul was invoked.”4 But we do need to inspect the foundation on which these ceilings depend.

The belief that Scripture relegates women to a lesser role is not a mere misunderstanding of its teachings. Rather, it expresses a false equivalence, one that hinges on a categorically incongruent philosophy and misrepresents Scripture’s intent. An anthropology espousing that women are unequal and, consequently, relegated to an inferior position relates more directly to an Aristotelian conception of women than a Hebrew one. In what follows, I propose that our Christian discourse on gender recover its Hebrew roots, and that we examine the philosophical influences that have, at least to some degree, intermingled with our understanding of male and female as image-bearers of the divine.

But first, we must go back to the beginning.

Eikon 1:2 (F...

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