Hi friends! This quarter, I wrote a paper for my Christian theology class that explored the relationship between the doctrine of the Incarnation (God putting on human flesh) and the female body. It’s amazing how often the female body is negatively opined upon in Christian spaces. I wanted to think about how the Incarnation affirms all bodies, and particularly women’s. This is a little more academic than most things I’ll post here. I hope you’ll forgive me, or just skip it and read the next one. 😉
Over the Christmas holiday, I entertained myself and my family with an AI photo generator app. For $1.99, the app generated personalized photos of myself in various holiday-themed scenarios and costumes. On the fourth day of Christmas, I posted one of them on my social media accounts. In it “my” AI body galloped through the snow in a white sleeveless romper and heels. The gleeful face, affixed to the body at an odd angle, was unmistakably my own.
However, a complaint reached my ears through the interwebs that my AI photo bordered on “provocative.” How and where this concern arose is irrelevant for my purposes here, nor do I want to expose the person who shared sincere concerns. What is relevant, however, is an implied and secondary concern: that the AI image might taint the sexual purity of the men who follow me on social media. That served as yet one of many ways in which the objectified female body (or an AI representation of it!) continues to be interpreted as an inherently harmful, dangerous, and/or corrupting influence on men. However, while sin may have corrupted the human body with death, the incarnation of Christ and a proper Christology should lead the church to see the female body as inherently dignified and good regardless of sinful or improper responses to it. In dialogue with Saint Athanasius, Barth and liberation theologies, I intend to argue just that.
Women’s Bodies Are Good Because God Created Them
Our good God “made all things through his own Word, our Lord Jesus Christ.”1 God grudged “nothing its existence,” meaning he delighted in the existence of both women and men who were made in his image.2 God intended for both women and men to live in a state of holiness and blessedness with him, and this lent them an essential dignity as image-bearers of the divine.3
However, God warned human beings that rejection of him and his Word would end in the “corruption of death.”4 Yet humans were carried away by temptation and enticed into greater and greater sin. Due to sin, all bodies, including women’s, experienced and would “remain in the corruption of death.”5 Human beings made themselves lowly, giving up the “share of the power of [God’s] own Word.”6 Even if human beings repented, death was still necessary so that God could not be made to be a liar and so that God could remain true to his word.7
Nonetheless, women’s bodies are worthy of rescue from death. It would have been “improper” for the story to end with the corruption of God’s good creation.8 God’s goodness could not suffer the corruption of God’s creation, (corruption due to the “deceit of demons”).9 And so, God’s goodness required him to rescue women (and men, of course) from the corruption of death.10 Also, because God is strong, he couldn’t allow himself to be shown weaker than the evil that corrupted women’s (and men’s) bodies. 11
The Incarnation Saves Women from the Corruption of Death
Only Christ, the “Word of the Father,” was able to regenerate the naturally corruptible creation.12 It was he who created the universe from “non-being” in the first place; therefore, only he could restore what was lost. And so, in his deity, strength, and free will, God united himself to humanity while still remaining the “superior partner.”13
He began by taking a body like ours for himself. He then made a temple out of a woman’s body and dwelt within it until his human birth.14 He then delivered his own body, “liable to the corruption of death,” to death on behalf of all, so that “with all dying in him the law concerning corruption of human beings might be undone.”15 Then, in the grace of his resurrection, he “banishes” death from them.16 Not only were women’s bodies good because they were created by a good God; they were also worth saving, redeeming, and restoring.
The Incarnation Saves Women from Ontological Indignity
Because the Word, Jesus Christ, created women in the image of God and then, through the incarnation, “renewed” in them the image of God, women’s bodies must be perceived as good and inherently, ontologically dignified by the Creator.17
As Christ has “vivified and purified” our mortal bodies, the Church ought to perceive women’s bodies as ontologically good. While members of the Church may have had sinful and improper responses to women’s bodies, women’s bodies are not to blame because God’s deity “includes His humanity,” which He has joined to ours.18 God is in fact inclusive of all that makes women women, beginning with their sameness to men and their sexual differences (from men), alongside their experiences of childbirth, menstruation, breastfeeding, and menopause. These aspects of female personhood are part and parcel of the humanity that God does not exclude from his divinity. By including it, he dignifies it.
Liberation Theology Applied
Liberation theologies are a body of thought that describe theology that is formed through the experiences of victims and oppressed groups.19 These theologies claim that humanity needs rescue from both personal and societal sin.20 Therefore, theology should be done contextually with perspectives of oppressed and marginalized communities brought to bear upon the question “what is the good news of the gospel for my community?”21
Women were no more corrupted by sin than men, and yet the curse of the fall was that man would “rule over” her.22 Throughout history, patriarchal “rule” has been an easy default because the unique physical features of women create vulnerability through childbearing, breastfeeding, and the raising of children. The social and physical tethering to children (the “least”), coupled with blame for the immoral sexual activities and/or desires of men (who were not physically tethered to children), has often moved women away from social power and into arenas where they are vulnerable to oppression and abuse.23
In this context, I believe Liberation theology helps us ask and answer two questions: “What is the good news of the gospel for women?” and “How should the incarnation inform the Church’s social response to women’s bodies?”
What is the good news?
The good news for women, as I’ve argued above, is that their bodies are good because they were made by a good God, and that women–in all their femaleness–have had the image of God renewed in them through the incarnation of Jesus Christ, who unites himself to all of their femaleness. Because Jesus Christ has done away with the body of death, he has reversed the curse of sin, and women’s bodies are not inherently to blame for the sin of others.
How should the incarnation impact the Church’s posture toward women’s bodies?
If liberation theology asks how oppressed groups can be saved through the incarnation from societal (not just personal) sin, then I think our answer lies in the Church’s need to examine the ways in which it is still influenced by beliefs that exclude the female body from the dignity supplied by Jesus Christ. The Church should therefore seek to dismantle mindsets that blame women’s bodies for the sin of others.
From the beginning, the Church ought to have been the place where the socially “weak” were strengthened and esteemed, yet early church fathers often spoke of women’s bodies as if the incarnation had no bearing on their inherent dignity or on how they should be perceived by Christian brothers and sisters. Rather, women were often identified with Eve, a lusty temptress, rather than with Christ.24 Hannelie Wood argues that early church fathers saw women as falling “outside” of Christ’s “redemptive power.”25 In identifying women’s bodies with (what the fathers believed was sinful) physical pleasure, it seems these men conflated their own sexual desire (sinful or not) with the female body.
This is not a new conversation by any means. But sinful posturing toward women’s bodies is still evident in the Church wherever the mindset exists that a woman’s body is a danger. Sometimes, but not always, this mindset fuels the embrace of the “Billy Graham rule.”26 Other times it fuels the mindset of a male pastor who decides he should not offer pastoral care to female parishioners. I dare say these mindsets always contribute to a vacuum of care and discipleship for women in the church and marginalize women from male leadership (wherever male leadership abounds). Further, it has the potential to mar the Church’s gospel witness and limit evangelistic conversations.
Conclusion
The incarnation of Christ, alongside a proper Christology, ought to reverse improper or sinful attitudes toward the female body. Because the female body was made inherently good by a good Creator and then renewed with the image of God through the incarnation (God’s joining of humanity to Godself), it is undeserving of fear and/or vilification. The Church’s social responses to the female body should be framed in this light, and all sinful responses/reactions to a female body ought not be conflated with the female body. If the Church could somehow take great strides toward this change, I believe we would see a healthier and more prosperous Church in which all God’s children are properly situated, cared for, discipled, and empowered to use their Spirit-given gifts.
Thanks for reading! I’m a book-obsessed pastor, podcaster, author, and life and leadership coach. For essays and podcasts that come straight to your inbox, subscribe to this Dear Exiles newsletter in the subscription box above. Fun fact: I’m also the author of Dear Boy:, An Epistolary Memoir and the host of the Your Pastor Reads Books podcast.
Athanasius and C.S. Lewis, On the Incarnation, ed. John Behr, Popular Patristics Series no. 44b (Yonkers, N.Y: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2011), 52.
Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 52.
Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 52.
Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 52.
Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 52.
Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 52.
Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 55-56.
Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 55. On the same page, Athanasius also writes that it “was improper for that what had once been made rational and partakers of his Word should perish, and once again return to non-being through corruption.”
Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 55.
Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 56.
Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 55-56.
Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 58.Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 58. Athanasius says Christ the Word realized “that in no other way would the corruption of human beings be undone except, simply, by dying, yet being immortal and the Son of the Father the Word was not able to die, for this reason he takes to himself a body capable of death, in order that it, participating in the Word who is above all, might be sufficient for death on behalf of all, and through the indwelling Word remain incorruptible, and so corruption might henceforth cease from all by the grace of the resurrection.”
Karl Barth, The Humanity of God (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1960), 45-46.
Athanasius, On the Incarnation,57.
Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 57.
Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 57.
Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 63.
Barth, The Humanity of God, 50.
Amy Hughes, “Jules Martinez-Olivieri-Christology, Liberation, Participation,” Onscript, Feb 2, 2021., https://onscript.study/podcast/jules-martinez-olivieri-christology-liberation-participation/.
Hughes, “Jules Martinez-Olivieri.”
Hughes, “Jules Martinez-Olivieri.”
Gen 3:16
We may look no further than to the life of Fantine in the novel Les Miserables to see this tragedy unfold.
Hannelie Wood, “Feminists and Their Perspectives on the Church Fathers’ Beliefs Regarding Women: An Inquiry,” Verbum et Ecclesia 38.1 (2017): n.p., https://www.proquest.com/docview/1877190322/311B18687E4741AAPQ/14?accountid=202487&sourcetype=Scholarly%20Journals. Wood describes the positions of various church fathers. Clement of Alexandria thought that women were inherently inferior to men despite the incarnation: “It belongs to the male alone to be virtuous, and to the woman to be licentious and unjust.” It seems he didn’t consider the things that constituted her femaleness as a feature of her humanity, either: “We do not say that woman's nature is the same as man's, as she is woman….Pregnancy and parturition, accordingly, we say belong to woman, as she is woman, and not as she is a human being” (emphasis added). Augustine also thought that, despite the incarnation and crucifixion of Christ, women were still the “bearers” of sin.
Wood, “Feminists and their Perspectives,” n.p.
I’m fairly certain that what is meant by the “Billy Graham rule,” is common knowledge among seminarians and ministers. But if not, a brief Wikipedia search will illuminate this.