Could Christ Have Been a Woman?

An Interview with Father Basil Pennnington
by Simeon Alev (Continued)

Interviewer: Is it conceivable to you that Christ could have been a woman?

Fr. Basil Pennington: In his time and place? No. I mean, look, he had a hard enough time as a man! Could he today? Well, yes, if God had chosen this as the time and place for the Incarnation, I think it could have been possible-though I still suspect he probably would have chosen to be male because the contemporary world is still far from being a place where a female Incarnation would be universally accepted. You know, we've seen women in different countries rise to the highest position, but that's often because they've stepped into a male expectation, or what would be called a "male" way of looking at things. And I think the great thing will be when women, as women, can really lead and help society to move ahead. But we're still a good way from that as far as I can see, in this country and probably every other country in the world.

Interviewer: Sociological considerations aside, though, is there anything to Panteleimon's insistence that there is some inherent limitation on a woman manifesting an attainment equal to Christ's?

Fr. Pennington: No. And our Lord used the feminine image when he could-like a mother hen gathering her chicks to her breast and so on. He was very comfortable with men and women. He wasn't afraid to have John resting at his bosom, and at the same time, he wasn't afraid of letting Mary Magdalene anoint his feet and kiss them - which was an enormously sensuous and exciting experience! But he had to work in the time and place he chose to come to, which was a very pivotal place inhabited by a Semitic culture, which, because of a certain simplicity and earthiness that it had, made it possible for his message to be absorbed into every other world culture and philosophy. That's where and when he chose to come, and in that situation I don't think there would have been much hope, as a woman, of his fulfilling the mission that he'd set for himself.

Interviewer: Is it your impression that, as a woman, Christ would have been a different sort of Savior?

Fr. Pennington: I would say yes. Because Christ expressed himself in a very complete way, and so because he was a man, there was a maleness about that expression that, if he'd been a woman, probably would have been different. Even though he tried to use feminine images, I think that, being a man of his time and place, he was probably more comfortable with male images. And so he says, for example, "What father among you would give his child a serpent when he asked for a fish?" If he had been a woman, I think he might well have said, "What mother among you would do that?" He was more comfortable with praying, "Our Father." In fact he almost always spoke of God as "Father"-and if he'd been a woman, he might well have spoken much more of God as "Mother" and used more womanly images. Not that he didn't use them; I mean, he complemented the story of the good shepherd immediately with that of the housewife who'd lost a coin, or the story of the farmer selling the seed with that of the woman selling the leaven. So he tried as much as he could, given his people and their situation, to bring out both sides. But he was obviously a man and probably would not have chosen twelve men as his key group, with the women just kind of serving in the background, if he had been a woman.

Interviewer: In my talk with Father Panteleimon, he went on to assert that this seemingly discriminatory aspect of the Christian tradition - the Twelve Apostles and the priests all being male - is in fact inspired and sanctioned by God "Himself," and that allowing the tradition to be toyed with by misguided reformers who want to ordain women can only have disastrous consequences. But some liberal voices within the Catholic Church, such as yours, insist that traditional Christianity's attitude toward women is not sanctioned by God but has its roots in the patriarchal ambience of the Church's early history and now can be modified to suit our more socially enlightened times.

Fr. Pennington: You know, our present Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, is a very sharp person, and I wonder if he wasn't sending that very message to the Church and his people when he spoke on this a couple of years ago. According to Catholic belief, you know, he has the power to speak infallibly, but very rarely has it ever been invoked. And when people have tried to push him to speak infallibly about this particular subject, as well as about other things, he's always refused - so that's already a message. But it was even more significant to me that two weeks after his very sweet apology for the way his predecessors had treated Galileo, in which he said publicly that they had failed because they'd taken the scriptures too literally, he spoke out against this question of ordaining women, himself explicitly arguing, just as Father Panteleimon does - from a very literal interpretation of scripture - that this male-only priesthood is simply the way it's always been and always will be. Now, again, he's a sharp man and I don't think he was missing that. I think he was sending a message that said, in effect, "Just as they were too sure about Galileo back then, we're a little too sure about this thing now. Just wait around, boys, and you'll see." In other words, I think that by using the very same arguments he himself had said were wrong in the Galileo case, he was saying to us, "Hey, this could change, too!" And not only that it could change but that it will!

Interviewer: I wanted to ask you about some other models for the kind of freedom we've been speaking about in relationship to gender because there are different approaches to this. For example, there are many spiritual practitioners who see the differences between men and women as being solely the expression of cultural conditioning, and believe that any gender-based conditioning must, like all forms of conditioning, be transcended if we're to become truly free. Certain religious traditions, on the other hand, adhere to a kind of "tantric" model in which there are strictly defined spheres and roles said to be divinely ordained for men and for women. In Orthodox Judaism, for example, the men devote themselves to study and prayer and the women find their spiritual fulfillment in bearing children and maintaining the sanctity of the home. And, according to this paradigm, it's only by each sex giving themselves wholeheartedly to the fulfillment of their respective roles, and then coming together in their differences, that divine union can be achieved and God's will can become manifest on earth. Similarly, in more eclectic or secular circles, a number of contemporary thinkers and practitioners have asserted that women are generically suited to pursue a path of immanence that involves, as in the Jewish model, deeply connecting to their bodies and to the cycles of nature and finding the sacred in the ordinary events of daily life, while men tend to seek for the transcendence of all that is worldly and to look beyond themselves for the sacred mystery that lies at the source of all existence. Do you feel that this notion of distinct paths for men and women holds true in practice?

//Continued