There was an interesing article in the Summer 1995 issue of Fairacre Chronicle, entitled 'The Woman at the Well,' by Sister Edmée. In it she reflects on varying interpretations of the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4:1-42). Almost all modern male commentators have taken the story literally and condemned the woman as immoral. But some of the patristic writers (Origen, Augustine) treated the story symbolically. They see in the five husbands a reference to the five books of Moses, or to the five sences of the body. (John Chrisostom, though he accepts the story of the five husbands literally, non the less interprets the behaviour of the woman to Jesus as a model of discernment and wisdom).(All underlining by site author).Sister Edmée goes on to consider a book by Sandra Schneiders, an American feminist theologian. In her book Schneiders apparently starts with seven pages of feminist principles of interpretation. (!) The Bible, according to her, is ideologically biased against women. Despite this unpromising start Schneiders, according to Sister Edmée, goes on to produce an excellent exegesis of New Testament revelatory texts. She treats the Samaritan woman story as a (wholly orthodox) symbolic account of Jesus, as the bridegroom of the new Israel coming to claim Samaria as an intergral part of the new Israel.
Sister Edmée continues by reflecting on how we should read (not interpret) the Bible. If we believe it to be the Word of God, we have to put ourselves under that Word, we have to "allow it to speak to us how and when it chooses, without our forcing a sense from it, a meaning onto it, or depriving it of a meaning, not consonant with our culture." If it is to disclose itself to us we have to be passive; in regard to the Word we are all 'women.' For as Hebrews tells us, "the Word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the divisions of soul and spirit" (Heb 4:12). Thus we ought not to be active, in relation to the Word, piercing it (her emphasis) with a sword; when we do, we crucify it.
This thought makes Sister Edmée query the application of feminist principles to the Bible. Schneiders had expounded the importance of metaphor and the meaning of symbol, and the dangers when a metaphor is literalised and had declared: "The body, as a person's way of being present, is a prime instance of symbol." But Sister Edmée believes that "these insights of Schneiders are not carried through to her exposition of feminist principles in regard to the Bible."
Though Sister Edmée acknowledges that she has some sympathy with feminist insights, she insists that: "The very great disservice feminism has rendered us so far is to remove the categories 'male' and 'female' from the realm of metaphor and symbol in scripture and language and to urge on us a ... rigid literalism. ... Male and female symbolise two modes of being designed to be united in one, fleetingly at the level of the flesh, eternally at the level of spirit. But as symbols they are also distinct ... one representing what is external and active, the other representing what is inernal and passive."
It was stimulating to have read Sister Edmée's article only a few days after re-reading C.S. Lewis' 'Priestesses in the Church?', written nearly fifty years ago, in which he demonstrates why (in his view) the church should not consider ordaining women. Lewis contends that 'rationality' is an inadequate justification in this instance. He fully accepts that women do all sorts of jobs as well as men, and that in the pastoral office they are as capable as men of piety, sympathy, zeal and learning. He points out that in the New Testament there was a man who had four daughters who 'prophesied' i.e. preached (Acts 21:9). There were prophetesses even in Old Testament times. Prophetesses, not priestesses.
Lewis goes on to point out the central fact that a priest is primarily a representative (a matter that has been much discussed recently). A priest is a double representative: he represents us to God and God to us. There is no difficulty in a woman having the former role. Why, he asks, cannot the latter be accepted? Women are not less holy, charitable or intelligent than men; in this sense a woman may be as 'God-like' as a man, and in a given woman much more so than a given man. The sense in which she cannot represent God can be seen more plainly by looking at it the other way round.
Suppose Christ had been born female, and had taught us to pray to our Mother in heaven; that the mystical marriage were reversed, that the Church were the Bridegroom and Christ the Bride - all this, Lewis believes, is involved in the claim that a woman can represent God as a priest does. This he firmly believes would be a different religion. Why? Since God is beyond gender, what can it matter whether we say He or She, Father or Mother, Son or Daughter? But Christians believe that God Himself, in the Bible and in the person of Christ, has taught us how to speak of Him.
The fallacy, Lewis thinks, is in the modern assumption that sex (or gender) is something superficial and irrelevant to the spiritual life. For most secular purposes and professions gender is irrelevant; men and women can be treated as interchangeable, as neuters. There is a call for 'equality'; but if this means only interchangeability it is of no assistance for the claim for the prieshood of women. For in our Christian life we are not homogeneous and interchangeable units, but different and complementary units of a mystical body. Male and female symbolise to us the hidden things of God. One of the functions of human marriage is to express the nature of the union between Christ and the Church.
The Church claims to be the bearer of a revalation. If that claim is false we want not to make priestesses but to abolish priests. Only a man, insists Lewis, "can represent (provisionally and till the Parousia) the Lord to the Church: for we are all, corporately and individually, feminine to Him." The Church is the Bride of Christ.