In Memory of Her (10th Anniversary): A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins Paperback – March 1, 1994

This book is suitable for a college level investigation into feminism and the Catholic Church.

This book offers a major feminist reconstruction of early Christianity. Now forty years old, you would expect many parts to seem dated. Though some parts do reflect the concerns of the 1970s and 1980s, especially the methodological sections, much of the rest remains fresh. However, it is a serious, highly academic tome, one that will not be accessible to the general reader despite her claimed intentions.Both as a feminist and a theologian, and as an expert on early Church history, Schüssler Fiorenza does not want to reject biblical history, no matter how sexist she finds it. Instead, she wants to reclaim that history, and reclaim it for women in particular. That means finding the authentic women’s histories in the Christian Bibles. In this way, she echoes a concern of her time in trying to find the historical Jesus as a Mediterranean peasant, an itinerant preacher, an ascetic, a political dissident, or whatever one might call him in secular terms.Schüssler Fiorenza wanted to speak to two audiences in 1983: women in the academy and in the churches, and the academic audience of theology and religious studies. She did not want to write a popular book on “women in the Bible,” but to find even those histories that the texts obscure. I would say that she succeeded in not writing a popular book, but it certainly succeeds as a careful, academic one.To find the real histories hidden in the texts, Schüssler Fiorenza begins with methodology. Here too she reflects the concerns of her time, both in biblical studies and in the humanities more generally. Those unfamiliar with these movements will find Part One slow going. Many of these ideas have become more familiar since 1983, so her defenses may read today as trying to do too much that she didn’t need to do.After this methodological part, Schüssler Fiorenza turns to her central historical question: how did women lose the leading role in the Jesus movement and in the house churches that they once had? She argues that Christian texts reflect a steady process of patriarchalization. The authors featured male figures. The church chose to canonize texts with more patriarchal views, leaving out “Gnostic” and “heretical” texts, especially those closer to the Sofia tradition in the early church.He see this in the text she chooses as her title. In Mark 14:9, Jesus praises a woman who anoints him with a costly oil, saying this this act will be remembered “in memory of her.” Unfortunately, most accounts cannot be bothered to remember her name. John’s gospel does provide her name, Mary of Bethany, which connects her to other references in our texts.We know from Paul’s letters that women were important figures in the early house churches. His greetings often mention women as co-workers in Christ and he refers to many missionary couples in his community. As a result, we have many of their names but we tend not to know much about them beyond that. We have other accounts of women in texts like the Gospel of Mary or the Acts of Paul and Thecla, but as they church became more strongly hierarchical and patriarchal, it excluded these once-popular accounts.The household codes provide another example of patriarchalization that Schüssler Fiorenza discusses at length. Like others, she sees a steady transition from the radical equality of the authentic Paul, to a kind of conditional hierarchy in deutero-Paul, and then to full hierarchy in the letters of pseudo-Paul.As she examines such texts, Schüssler Fiorenza reads between the lines to imagine and piece together the role of women in the Jesus movement. Her knowledge of Greco-Roman culture helps her reconstruct the movement's organizational forms in Antioch as well as the cities to which Paul writes. Some will read these analyses as speculative, but she has little choice. This project rests on the methodology that she developed in the first part, and I would suggest that objectors offer an alternative methodology if they wish to provide a better account.While I appreciate much of this analysis, I thought that Christological understanding of Jesus in terms of Sophia felt a bit plodding at times. While important for helping the Church's mission to the Hellenistic world, Schüssler Fiorenza did not distinguish the “marketing” aspects of Sophia for urban Greeks from the “genuine” theology of the idea. We do have “heretical” and “Gnostic” texts that feature Sophia but those vary considerably in importance (and quality).I also noticed that Schüssler Fiorenza necessarily focused only on the urban churches of the diaspora and did not try to reconstruct either the community in Jerusalem, which remained skeptical of Paul, nor whatever house churches might have existed in the villages where Jesus lived and mostly preached. She does not use Acts to try to reconstruct itinerant preachers in the villages, nor those who worked outside the eastern Mediterranean.Schüssler Fiorenza concludes with the question of praxis: what will we do about all this? Her approach offers a feminist liberation theology, one that disrupts traditional androcentric approaches. This too echoes others concerns of her time, notably the liberation theology of Latin America. She sees this theology as rejecting domination, leaving open a door for white men of the rich world to relinquish privilege and join a movement of radical equality. This agenda connects to wider themes in feminism, history, and epistemology. Difficult as it is for those unfamiliar with academic scholarship in these fields, this important book still repays study.

This arrived in great condition and earlier than I expected. I appreciate that so much.

Schüssler opens eyes to women's place in the politically uncontaminated Early Church. Worth the effort to think and study.

The Kindle one is very poorly editted. The book cannot be read properly at all.

Everything as expected

In spite of a deficit of sources and incomplete pieces of the puzzle, Schüssler Fiorenza reconstructs the organizational forms of the early Christian missionary movement (30 - 50 C.E.) and examines its theological perspective. She identifies Galatians 3:28 as a key expression of the movement's theology ("There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus."). In fleshing out the [male] players of the missionary movement centered in Antioch, she often has to read between the lines to imagine and piece together the role of women within the movement. I do not find this a weakness, but a necessity with imagination, given the reality of lack of sources. Schüssler Fiorenza's knowledge of Greco-Roman culture assists in reconstruction of the movement's organizational form.Schüssler Fiorenza begins her reconstruction by examining the organizational forms of the early missionary movement, focusing specifically upon the house churches and the missionaries themselves. In examining the house churches, Schüssler Fiorenza contrasts them with other religious clubs and associations in the Greco-Roman culture. This leads her to the conclusion that within the Christian house church structure, women gained new status and dignity, and that within the missionary movement itself, women were among the prominent missionary leaders.Schüssler Fiorenza next turns to the theological self-understanding of the missionary movement. She posits that it has three main features: it is rooted in the experiences of the Holy Spirit, it understands the ministry and life of Jesus in terms of Sophia/Wisdom, and it has a prophetic-critical attitude regarding the Temple being the locus of God's presence.While her treatment of the Christological understanding of Jesus in terms of Sophia felt a bit plodding at times, its importance in terms of the church's mission to the Hellenistic world and its experience of wisdom theology cannot be underestimated. She helpfully uses this argument as foundation for the importance of Christian equality and obedience. Lastly, Schüssler Fiorenza helps the reader understand how the new meaning of being a temple community effected the theology of the movement in erasing distinctions between men and women, slave and free, and Jewish and Gentile Christians. This effective argument points to what Schüssler Fiorenza says was the key to the theological self-understanding of the early missionary movement (Galatians 3:28).

Very interesting.