I Am Not My Story

Reading “Origins of Difference: The Gender Debate Revisited” by Elaine Storkey

Elaine Storkey’s book, Origins of Difference, provides a very approachable entry into views on sex and gender in the second half of the 20th century. The book is just over 20 years old and it would be great to see a revised edition that included the larger spectrum of sexual and gender identities, because Elaine brings thoughtful and well-crafted insights to the debate. She begins with some historical context and moves into an exceptional overview and critique of the various perspectives on female/male differences from the ’50s onward. Her scope includes academia as well as popular literature and moves between secular and theological. She does all this from a unique and distinctly Christian philosophical framework known as Reformational Philosophy.

It is beyond the scope of this post to attempt an explanation of Reformational Philosophy (the curious may visit All of Life Redeemed) but I would like to mention that I find this philosophical framework compelling and exciting for the freedom it inspires. In the first place, the freedom of being my whole self. This includes my sex and gender identity as well as my interests and passions. Secondly, freedom in thought. I may approach an open table, as it were, of all ideas from everywhere and consider everything; nothing need be seen as taboo because this philosophical perspective provides a robust framework from which to think critically. Instead of an overly specific, house-of-cards, adopted knowledge, I can build, as with Legos, an evolving and changing understanding with adapted knowledge. That is, I can learn from others, borrowing what’s useful, setting aside what’s not (perhaps, even, to pick it up again later), and continuously evolve my view as experience dictates — but I digress.

Elaine’s concluding chapter reframes many conservative Christian views on gender as taken from scripture and identifies four ways we can understand female/male within the Christian canonical tradition: Difference, Similarity, Complimentary, and Union. This section reads like an excellent sermon and does a good job of recasting more traditional sex and gender views within Christianity by providing a robust alternative theological understanding.

The issue I take is with a perceived overemphasis on “the Bible” to resolve these complex issues of sex and gender. While I think people can certainly find truths within the tradition, there is always the question of how to correctly understand and interpret that tradition. In looking to “the Bible” to resolve issues of gender, there is a risk of reducing sex and gender to the theological. While sex and gender can certainly be looked at through that filter, it alone is not sufficient to answer the question, anymore than biology, sociology, or any other aspect within our experience.

In addition, her stated hermeneutic that “[the Bible] holds the truth to its own meaning and interpretation” seems wholly inadequate (not to mention, circular). The idea that scripture interprets itself doesn’t get us any closer to correctly understanding or interpreting it. Our Christian “creedal” starting point need not include the canonical tradition. I ask you: isn’t God in Christ enough? Of course we may know something of God through the canonical traditions and they may be very important for understanding our faith experiences, but I agree with Barth that it speaks to revelation and is not itself revelation. Or, as it has been so beautifully stated, “the Word did not become flesh in order to become word again”. Christ is THE revelation of God; the canonical tradition merely bears witness to that revelation.

The other mistake I find is the emphasis on the narrative, or story. Elaine identifies the story as “creation, sin, redemption” (a clear riff on Dooyeweerd’s identification of the Christian religious ground motive) and states that it “give[s] us a cogent framework for putting together the story of our humanness and our identity.” I take issue with this, in part because I disagree with the identification of the Christian religious ground motive as “creation, fall, redemption”, which in fact expresses complex theological ideas (I agree with others who think it would be better expressed as “The living Creator God, who is Love, personified in the historical Jesus”) and therefore, to view my life within that framework is to reduce my experience to the pisitic (faith) aspect. My life is not a story. There may be narrative lines I can trace within my life, but it would reduce my experiences to view all my life within any single narrative. Certainly there is value in seeing patterns or themes in your experience because it allows you (for one thing) to deal with growth and change in your own life. But at the end of the day, my life is a wild thing, wending unpredictably through unknown ways and only God knows where I will be at the end of it.

I like to close on a positive note. I really loved how Elaine pointed out that, while scripture doesn’t explicitly teach how to be male or female for God (in fact, ‘there is no male or female… for we are all one in Christ’), the universal teaching provided in the fruits of the spirit are all characteristics typically associated with the feminine. This is, in my limited experience, Elaine Storkey at her best. To take something familiar from the canonical tradition and recast it in a distinctly feminine light that blows the mind. Just like her pointing out that the woman at the well wasn’t a disastified woman (moving from lover to lover) but a discarded woman, since women could not initiate divorce (from her book, Women in a Patriarchal World). In these simple and fresh interpretations, Elaine Storkey reveals the heavy hand of male dominance and patriarchy deep within our understanding of our own Christian religious tradition. It is time to reclaim this tradition but also to not be bound by it.