Today we continue our look at Liberation Theology and how it has shaped our current economic and political climate. In this post we will look at Feminist hermeutics which has some of the same desires as the other areas of liberation theology. For the feminist interpreter of Scripture the emphasis is placed on the dominance of the male population in the oppression of the female population. For female liberators interpretation "embodies a deep hermeneutic of suspicion that the conventional constructions of the history of biblical interpretation do not represent value-neutral descriptions of biblical history, traditions, and texts. All interpretation has been mediated through male dominated reading communities." When the Southern Baptist Convention issued their statement on the role of women in ministry and in general it created an enormous uproar. Many were led to decry this statement as nothing more than a male dominated hiearchy trying to force its ideology on the "weaker sex." In realty the SBC was simply trying to restore the proper understanding of Scripture in regard to women. The whole idea is that we are to allow Scripture to transform culture, not culture to transform Scripture.
For the female interpreter there must be an unmasking of patriarchal bias, because such bias has led to the view that women are inferior to the male race. When interpreting Scripture feminists enter with the presupposition that women are equal to men and as a result they have the right to accept or reject biblical texts, if it does not seem to promote the direction they have undertaken. One feminist interpreter has said that the Bible is "authored by men, written in androcentric language, reflective of male experience, selected and transmitted by male religious leadership. Without question the Bible is a male book." Because of this view, many have tried to eradicate the idea of male influence in the Bible and in the songs that we sing. Recently the NIV proposed a new translation that is gender neutral. Any reference to God as a father will be referenced as a parent so as to be acceptable by the feminist interpreter. Many of the traditional hymns that have been accepted for generations have recently undergone a change so as not to be offensive to feminists liberators.
The fatal flaw of the feminist interpreter is revealed in this gender neutral ideology. A true interpreter of Scripture recognizes that God is the author of all Scripture and that He used human instruments, inspired by the Holy Spirit to communicate His timeless truths. To say that the Bible is a "male book" is to eliminate the role God played in inspiring the Scriptures. For as God's Word says "all Scripture is God breathed" and as result we cannot minimize the role of God in the writing and preservation of Scripture.
Of course this discussion is insignificant if you start your whole premise with your own presupposition. When we go into Scripture with our own agenda or our own ideas then we can make Scripture mean what we want it to mean. However, this idea is not a legitimate interpretation of God's Word. In my next post I will examine some benefits to liberation theology and then we will look at the dangers of liberation theology. My purpose in doing this brief excursion into this theology is because if we will look at current events through this lens of understanding it will give us a better grasp of what is happening in our culture as we drift further and further from traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs. I hope you will stick around for a few days longer as we take this journey of understanding together.
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