'Who do you say that I am?' : a feminist study of women's personal Christologies

This thesis presents a study of the answers that contemporary women give to the question Jesus asked of the disciples: “Who do you say that I am?”. It explores the way in which women, throughout their faith journeys, negotiate and renegotiate their understanding of Christ in their lives. It demonstrates that women from diverse social, cultural and denominational backgrounds contextualise their Christologies within their personal life experiences and their reading of the Bible.

The answers that women revealed through questionnaires and interviews have been used to illustrate the feminist readings of the New Testament in chapters three to six. Each of these readings is presented as a “dialogue of voices” between contemporary male and female theologians, some of whom would identify themselves as feminist; interrupting the dialogue are the voices of the women who contributed to the research.

Chapter three presents a socio-political reading of Mark’s Gospel. An analysis of the literary structure of the Gospel reveals the way in which women present examples of true discipleship as required by the Markan Jesus. Chapters four and five draw on Michel Foucault’s discourse of power relations, and particularly his theory of pastoral power, to ‘reclaim’ texts which have been consistently used by the Church to disadvantage women. The reading of John’s Gospel in chapter six seeks the female in Christ using in particular Julia Kristeva’s theories of psychoanalysis and Grace Jantzen’s theory of natality. This reading argues that the signs in the Gospel reveal Sophia as much as the Logos within the human flesh of the incarnate Jesus.