Journal: Journal for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood
Volume: JBMW 16:1 (Spring 2011)
Article: Liberation as Gender Confusion
Author: Rebecca Jones

---

JBMW 16:1 (Spring 2011) p. 40

Liberation as Gender Confusion

A Review of Kristina LaCelle-Peterson, Liberating Tradition:
Women’s Identity and Vocation in Christian Perspective.
Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008.

Rebecca Jones

Writer, Speaker
Escondido, California

Summary of the Book’s Argument

Kristina LaCelle-Peterson uses a wide-angle lens to depict and analyze how Christian women view and should view their identity and vocation. She sets out four parts: (1) identity and body image, (2) Christian marriage, (3) the roles of women in church history, and (4) the use of gendered language for God. The author clearly enunciates her point of reference: “This book will assume that Scripture is normative in the Christian life and Christian community, and will therefore look to the biblical material for direction regarding each of the issues raised” (13).

Part 1 describes the identity of Eve at creation as Adam’s full equal, sharing his substance, his calling, and the image of God. Since the Hebrew term applied to Eve and translated “helper” is most often applied to Jehovah, the author reasons that this is clearly “not the helper as subordinate or unequal partner that many have associated with the term (à la daddy’s little helper, or Santa’s elves)” (34-35). The author believes that Adam and Eve lived together in undifferentiated equality, with no hierarchical roles in either their pre- or post-Fall states.

Old Testament women played a variety of roles: they conversed with God, sacrificed to protect men, fell prey to abuse, exercised power (sometimes wickedly), and acted as redeemers and prophets. Baffled by the morally confusing Old Testament pictures of women, LaCelle-Peterson moves with relief to the New Testament, whose depiction of women is “much brighter,” because Jesus models “a whole new basis on which human beings can interact: sacrificial love.” Here she examines the respect and honor that Jesus gave women, as he recognized the importance of their discipleship, designated them as the first witnesses of the resurrection, and poured out his Spirit on them in the Pentecost event.

As she moves into the apostolic letters, LaCelle-Peterson brings few if any original insights to the much-discussed passages such as those dealing with Phoebe, Junia, and Priscilla. Having decided on her preferred interpretation of key texts, she uses the weight of her arguments that women fully share in church leadership as the predominant principle for interpreting other Pauline passages, such as 1 Cor 14:34-35 and 1 Tim 2:8-15. To those who interpret these passages in a complementarian way,...

visitor : : uid: ()