I'm not opposed to feminist scholarship, mainly because I am not particularly excited by it. But a couple of years ago at the Tyndale Fellowship there was a very stimulating paper by Dr. Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer on Ezekiel as Christian Scripture. She engaged the topic of how do we reconcile the idea of a God of love with the horrendous violence inflicted on Judea in the sacking of Jerusalem. The things that happened in the sacking of a city - rape, torture, infanticide, murder - can seem disproportionate to the sin of the people and inconsistent with divine goodness. Her solution is to read Ezekiel in tandem with Lamentations and so complain that God has gone too far, and leave the response up to God. Tiemeyer wants to follow the story of the text rather than explain it away like some do, also she does not want to adopt radical feminist approaches that demand condemning the text either. Her concern is mainly theodicy. Her piece is now published in Expository Times. At the conference myself and Chris Wright suggested that perhaps a canonical reading of Ezekiel should also take into account the NT as well and see what the lens of the cross informs us of God's purposes on this subject.
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4 comments:
OMG I can't believe you opened a post with "I'm not opposed to feminist shcolarship"!
Now open one with "I'm not a racist but..." and one with "Lots of my best friends are gay but..."
Karl, there is feminist scholarship and then there is radical feminist scholarship. In the constituency in which I live any type of feminist scholarship is usually seen as liberal and hostile to the Bible. It doesn't have to be this way.
I hope my comment didn't sound too sarcastic Michael - and yeah I do understand what you're saying.
You must admit though, that "I have nothing against [insert minority group here]" is a kind of cliche'd way to open an imprecation against said minority group (which of course is not what you were doing at all).
I'm suddenly toying around with the idea of opening everything I write with, "Not that I have anything against white, male, married, middle-class biblical scholars..." (You can surely see how bloody annoying that would get?)
"The things that happened in the sacking of a city - rape, torture, infanticide, murder - can seem disproportionate to the sin of the people and inconsistent with divine goodness."
By whose standard was the response deemed disproportionate? Is the wrath described in Revelation disproportionate?
As Westerners (and as sinners), we often downplay the magnitude of human sin. We don't truly realize the evil of man and the wrath that it deserves.
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