DSSKRIFT FOR KJONNSFORSKNING
The topic of this essay is the role of Jesus Christ in the construction of gender in Christ ian theology. As the central figure in Christian faith Jesus Christ is regarded both as saviour and as a model for human existence. And for almost 1900 years the person of Jesus Christ and his significance for human existence has been discussed with little reference to gender. But theology and all other areas of knowledge and Sciences were male dominated areas. This influenced language and structures of thought so that the ideal human was consci ously or unconsciously imagined in the form of a man. This essay starts with the way in which feminist theologians have questioned this taken-for-granted relationship between Jesus and humanity understood as “manhood” in male dominated theological discourses. It is this male perspective that I want to question in the main part of this essay. I have been inspired by feminist criticism, but my own criticism comes from a queer perspective representing another marginal position in relation to a hegemonic masculinity. I under take this criticism by way of discussing a problematic passage in the New Testament (Matthew’s Gospel 19:12) in which Jesus introduces eunuchs as ideals in “the Kingdom of Heaven”. And I raise the question of the implications of setting up as ideal a human being who was regarded as so to speak “bet ween genders”, of questionable masculinity.
Feminist criticism and gender in theological discourse Some years ago the American feminist theo logian Rosemary Radford Ruether raised an important question to the way Christian theology had spöken of salvation: “Can a male saviour redeem and save wo/men?”2 It sounded like an innocent question, one that could be raised by a child, but in reality
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it went to the centre of feminist criticism of the theological teaching on Jesus Christ (termed “Christology”) by (mostly) male theologians. It introduced the particular, that is, the question of gender, into an area that in Christian thought was considered to be universal : the belief in Jesus Christ as saviour for all of humanity. To raise the question as one of “wo/men” unmasked both “saviour” and “humanity” and revealed that these “uni versal” concepts in reality were gendered and had privileged the masculine. This privileging of the male had been taken for granted not only in the praxis of the church and the world that was shaped by Christianity, but also in the very structure of language, philosophy and theology. Male domination is articulated in language and determines the way in which language labels and structures the world. In many languages “man” and other male categories are used to express “the human”. These expressions of power relations are not unique for Christian discourse, they are also found in ancient philosophy. But Ruether’s question focused on Christianity and its formulations of faith with regard to Jesus Christ and humanity and showed that they are gendered. And once it becomes visible that these terms are gendered, as “male saviour” and “wo/men”, it is impossible to return to a previous State of gender innocence. The net results of the criticism from Ruether and many other femi nist theologians are far reaching. They have shown that gender is not just another issue to be added onto the list of issues to be discuss ed within ethics and theology, for instance ecology, pacifism and social justice. Since gender forms part of the underlying structure of how the world is understood, to bring gen der up to a conscious level changes Christian reflection and discourse in a groundbreaking way. It is against this context that one of the