Hermeneutics

Hermeneutics is not only a key issue in feminist theology but also the area in which it has to give
account for itself in the face of past experience for the dangers involved when an advocacy
stance is used as a point of departure. It is the place where differences in approach between
feminist theologians surface. The three theologians cited above, all work within the biblical
framework, albeit in different ways. Like other liberation theologians they question the sole
efficacy of the historical critical method. They would probably hold that while the latter method
has claimed objectivity, the results of its scholarship has been largely in the service of white
middle-class males. As mentioned above, feminist theology starts from position of advocacy. It
makes use of the critical tools of analysis, but remains sceptical of the ideological framework in
which these tools have been used in the past.
Ruether, Fiorenza and Russell would all accept patriarchy as the social context of scripture.
Ruether finds that within biblical faith there are resources by which biblical texts themselves can
be criticized. This prophetic-liberating tradition is incompatible with patriarchal ideology, which
then loses its normative character; in fact it becomes idolatrous and blasphemous. It is
idolatrous to make males more like God than females. It is blasphemous to use the image and
name of the Holy to justify patriarchal domination and law. Feminist readings of the Bible can
discern a norm within Biblical faith by which the Biblical texts themselves can be criticised. To
the extent to which Biblical texts reflect this normative principle, they are regarded as
authoritative.(20) She points out that no theology, regardless of its claim that the Bible is a work
of inspiration, ever considers all parts of it as equally authoritative. Feminist theology finds what
is normative in the rediscovery of the prophetic context and content of biblical faith itself. This
prophetic liberating principle claimed by Ruether as hermeneutic for feminist theology is not
new. The fact that it is claimed for women is.
Fiorenza has probably devoted more time and painstaking scholarship in search of a feminist
critical hermeneutic than any other feminist theologian. In her monumental work In memory of
her, she says that Regardless of how androcentric texts may erase women from historiography,
they do not prove the absence of women from the center of patriarchal history and biblical
revelation. Therefore, feminists cannot afford to disown androcentric biblical texts and
patriarchal history as their own revelatory texts and history.(21) Yet women must remember that
these androcentric texts are not necessarily a trustworthy account of human history, culture and
religion. Fiorenza suggests that a feminist critical hermeneutics must move from androcentric
texts to their social-historical contexts. Then it can claim the contemporary community of
women struggling for liberation as its locus of revelation, and it can also reclaim its foresisters
as victims and subjects participating in patriarchal culture. Such a feminist reconstruction of the
historical world of Christianity needs a feminist hermeneutic described as one which shares in
the critical methods and impulses of historical scholarship on the one hand and in the theological
goals of liberation theologies on the other hand.(22)

Russell agrees with Ruether that the Bible has a critical or liberating tradition embodied in its
prophetic-messianic message of continuing selfcritique . . . As a feminist I look to the horizon
of expectation of the Bible as the source of my own expectation of justice and liberation.(23)
She finds her interpretative key in the witness of scripture of Gods promise (for the mending of
creation) on its way to fulfilment. All that denies the intention of God for the liberation of our
groaning creation in all its parts is not viewed as authoritative. This hermeneutic is developed
around the theme of partnership - Gods partnership at work in the biblical story and in our lives,
and partnership between women and men, who develop new ways of relating to the world and to
one another.(24)
The dilemma or paradox of feminist theology, or rather of those feminist theologians who use the
Bible as the source book of their theology, is pointed out by Mary Ann Tolbert: . . . one must
struggle against God as enemy assisted by God as helper, or one must defeat the Bible as
patriarchal authority by using the Bible as liberator.(25)