Missions Methods and Principles
Southwestern Journal of Theology
Volume 57, No. 1 – Fall 2014
Managing Editor: Terry L. Wilder
By F. Scott Spencer. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2012. 348 + x pages. Paperback, $30.00.
F. Scott Spencer has a clever way with words, as his book titles reflect. He also wrote Dancing Girls, “Loose” Ladies, and Women of the “Cloth.”1 He can effectively paint a good description, such as, “Jesus effectively tars his homefolk as dubious power-grubbers and prophet-snubbers” (217), and he writes in an engaging style. Yet, at times his “cleverness” can be offensive, such as when he occasionally uses cuss words to emphasize a point (253, 341) or uses the disrespectful description of the Holy Spirit as “the wild child of the divine family.”2
The evangelist Luke’s focus on women in his Gospel is well-known, but it is both interesting and disconcerting to see what erroneous interpretations feminist theologians derive from these Lukan passages. In this present book Spencer uses feminist biblical interpretation as his primary focus to examine the Lukan passages about women (ix). Thus, the vast majority of biblical interpreters that Spencer cites and evaluates in this book are feminist theologians, and he has voluminous footnotes to point the reader to further study in this area. A professor of New Testament and preaching at Baptist Theological Seminary in Richmond, Virginia, Spencer calls himself a “card carrying feminist” (viii) and believes feminist criticism is an essential element of proper critical biblical interpretation (viii-ix).
What is a feminist approach to Scripture? It involves approaching the text cautiously and skeptically because feminists believe it is “a text written by (dominant) men for men—that is, from a thoroughly androcentric (male-centered), patriarchal (father-ruled), and kyriarchal (master-dominated) perspective” (27). Its users parade a “hermeneutic of suspicion” concerning the biblical text (e.g., 38-40, 51) and try to determine what the author omitted, added, exaggerated, or changed. However, this reviewer believes this perspective has the approach backwards. Rather than the reader judging the Bible, the Bible—God’s inerrant Word—judges the reader.
Spencer views himself as a moderate feminist theologian, and his book bears this out as he eschews the more radical interpretations. For instance, he rejects Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza’s claim that Luke omitted Jesus’ encounter with the Syrophoenician woman (Mark 7:24-30) because it made Jesus look bad and because it showed a woman was partly responsible for the Gospel message going to Gentiles (210-11). Properly understood, this passage does not make Jesus look bad—nor does any other canonical passage. In the parable of the persistent widow and the unjust judge (Luke 18:1-8), Spencer disagrees with the typical feminist claim that Luke tamed the widow and recast her into a docile task of mere prayer: weak women’s work (265, 303-04). Thankfully, Spencer notes this wrong interpretation “fails to do justice to this vital spiritual activity” (305).
Yet, Spencer is often agreeable with the feminist perspective on these Lukan passages. He believes Luke muzzled women’s voices by failing to report what they said, with Luke 1-2 as an exception to the rule (118). Also, he sees most biblical texts as speaking to feminist issues no matter how tenuous that association may be. For instance, he somehow sees Mary’s willingness to bear the Messiah as confirmation of the position of the modern pro-choice movement (58, 75). These interpretations are troubling to this reviewer and are certainly at odds with traditional interpretation, but Spencer remains consistent with his focal point of feminist interpretation.
Deconstructing and reconstructing the biblical text is a mainstay in feminist interpretation, and Spencer practices this as his preferred method with a few nuances. He examines the Lukan passages in four areas: “place and occupation, voice and rhetoric, power and experience, and suspicion and trust” (ix). Although these can be helpful categories of examination, the perceived need to deconstruct and reconstruct the biblical text is flawed (9). It wrongly assumes the Gospel stories contain so many inaccuracies, erroneous emendations, and misleading elements that they must be ripped apart and reconstructed (39). Yet, such is not the case. They can be fully accepted in their present form.
There are many interpretive methods one may use when approaching the New Testament: grammatico-historical criticism, redaction criticism, narrative criticism, canonical criticism, liberation feminist criticism (37), and feminist criticism, to name a few. Although this reviewer is a strong proponent of the first one listed above, one ought to be familiar with what all of the other viewpoints have to say—not only to be aware of their deficiencies but also to see if they can add any positive tools to biblical studies. So, this present volume by Spencer is a helpful look at how feminist theologians interpret some specific biblical passages about women. Yet, the end result is that little information in this book is ultimately helpful for properly understanding these biblical passages. His primary contribution is his positive practice of closely examining a text to see if the surface meaning is really the intended meaning of the text.
- F. Scott Spencer, Dancing Girls, “Loose” Ladies, and Women of “the Cloth”: Women in Jesus’ Life (London: Continuum, 2004). ↩︎
- He quotes the term from Kalbryn A. McLean, “Calvin and the Personal Politics of Providence,” in Feminist and Womanist Essays in Reformed Dogmatics, ed. Amy Plantinga Pauw and Serene Jones (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2006), 109. However, Spencer does seem to enjoy using the term (66, 71, 324). ↩︎
