Alastair's Adversaria

From time to time I am told that I have fallen into error by absolutizing the ‘corporate’ and neglecting the ‘individual’. I consciously try to avoid thinking in terms of ‘individual’ and ‘corporate’. Whilst there are some who seem to be trying to oppose the individualism of our age with an alternative ‘corporatism’ — merely privileging the other element of the binary opposition — most people that I encounter seem to be attempting to do something far more radical, seeking to problematize any idea of a sharp distinction altogether. Continue reading →

One occasionally hears the question of how a male Jesus can be relevant to females. Some people seek to answer this by pointing out that just about everything about Jesus is ‘accidental’. Christ was a first-century Jewish man, but this does not mean that he can’t be relevant to a twentieth century English woman, because His first-century-Jewish-maleness was not a necessary part of His identity.

I find such a position unconvincing. If Christ’s identity as a first-century Jewish male is merely accidental to his identity, the entire symbolic grammar and significance of redemptive and covenant history seems to unravel. I am not willing to treat the fact that Christ was a Jew as opposed to an Inca as a matter of unimportance or indifference. Could Christ have come as a Chinese woman in the 15th century and still achieved His task?

‘But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law…’ (Galatians 4:4). If it was really necessary for the Saviour to come under the Law, if it was necessary that as a Son He should reveal the Father and if there really was such a thing as ‘the fullness of the time’, Christ’s first-century-Jewish-maleness is by no means accidental to His identity. The narrative logic of redemptive history demands nothing less.

It also seems to me that approaches to this question that tend to treat Christ’s first-century-Jewish-maleness as purely accidental tend to loosen the sense of identity between the immanent and economic Trinity at precisely the point where it is an article of faith. If Christ’s being a male has nothing to do with a revelation of the Second Person of the Trinity’s being the Son of the Father, I believe that we have gone seriously wrong somewhere.

Could Christ have come as a woman? I don’t believe that He could have. Just as in the order of creation, the man — the new Adam — had to come first. Out of His opened side the Church would be formed. To have Christ coming as a woman instead of as a man would have represented a break with the symbolic patterns of creation, rather than a restoration and perfection of them.

As James Jordan has observed, in the symbolic pattern of Scripture, the male initiates and the woman perfects, glorifies and completes. It is important that we do not understand this merely as an extrapolation from human biology. The fundamental differences between men and women are symbolic and liturgical, not biological. Our biological differences are an expression of these deeper differences. Whilst feminists and many others seem to believe that symbolism is something arbitrary that we project onto God, I believe that we must regard sexual differentiation as a necessary dimension of the manner in which we image God.

Although there is a tendency in some circles to regard the imago Dei as something that is primarily individual, having to do with the possession of a rational soul, or something else of that kind, I believe that our imaging of God must be regarded as far broader in character. Humanity was created to image God, not primarily as a collection of individuals, but as a body of people in relationships. Our relationships serve to image God and not merely our selves abstracted from relationships. A god who is only imaged by selves detached from relationships is not the Trinitarian God of Scripture, but a unitarian Monad. I believe that we must go even further and say that we image God in our bodies, and not merely in our rational capacities. In some way or other, the fact that I have arms, ears, eyes and a mouth is not unrelated to my being made in the image of God. We need to understand ‘anthropomorphisms’ on God’s part in the light of the more basic fact that man is ‘theomorphic’.

Nor do all human beings image God in the same way. The imago Dei is expressed in a differentiated manner within humanity. Men image God one way; women in another. Infants image God in a very different way from elderly people. Single people image God in ways that differ from the ways in which married people image God. The bishop or pastor images God in a way that differs from that 0f the lay person.

In a society that has been shaped by individualistic ways of looking at the world, it is very hard to understand the imago Dei in the way that I have sketched above, but it is essential that we do so.

I believe that the questions that feminists ask are not without importance. Male and female are the two relational poles of humanity. If Christ merely restores and perfects the male pole, the human race is not truly saved. There must be a restoration of both the male and the female poles of humanity. Christ must restore and perfect the imago Dei, but, if the picture that I have presented is correct, this must involve the restoration and perfection of a peculiarly female way of imaging God. Otherwise, we would merely be left with the hegemony of the male, with a masculine ideal for humanity imposed on all.

Feminist ‘solutions’ to this problem often take one of two forms. The first approach argues that the particularity of Christ is a matter of indifference. Christ is an androgynous ideal. If the great ideal is ultimately an androgynous one, sexual differentiation becomes a matter of ultimate indifference and our identity as male and female is devalued as a result. The body is depreciated in value. Another approach is that of stressing the particularity of Christ in order to present Him as a ‘partial incarnation’. This is the approach taken by Luce Irigaray, for example. The universal significance and uniqueness of Christ are sacrificed to His particularity.

I believe that the solution to this problem is in part to be found in the fact that Christ is not a detached individual, but is a corporate Person. We must think in terms of the totus Christus. In order to restore the imago Dei Christ must come as a man as the male pole is the initiating pole. The female pole is then restored by means of the gift of the Holy Spirit, who makes Christ more than a detached individual, forming the Bride from His side. The ‘Christ’ that is our ideal is not a detached individual, but the totus Christus, Christ head and body. This ideal is one that is inclusive of sexual differentiation.

Such an understanding makes room for a robust pnuematology. The Spirit is the sponsor of the feminine. The Spirit completes, glorifies and perfects what Christ started. Women image the work of the Spirit in a peculiar manner. Christ never exists apart from His Bride and comes to us in the glory of the Spirit. The uniqueness of Christ is preserved, because He alone can initiate the restoration of humanity. His universal relevance is assured, because it is the entire human race that He restores through His work and the gift of His Spirit. However, none of this need be achieved at the expense of His particularity as the particularity of the role that He plays is essential for the restoration of humanity as a whole.

Within such a picture I believe that we can move some way towards a better understanding of the manner in which the work of Christ leads to the perfection of the feminine and not the masculine alone.