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1. Ruether’s Criticism: Christians appropriated the Jewish idea of the Messiah and applied it to Jesus without keeping its social implications, while focusing on the idea of a divine saviour. This led to an anti-Judaism bias in Christianity in the New Testament, among the Fathers and still present today. Classical Christology mirrored the establishment of Christianity as the imperial religion of the Christian Roman Empire. Just as the Logos (Christ as the Word of God as in John 1, “the Word (logos) became flesh and dwelt among us”) governs the universe, so the Emperor and the Church govern the political universe, masters govern slaves and men govern women. Androgynous approaches are not helpful, for example, mystics like Julian of Norwich calling Jesus mother and father. Our human relations mirror our theology.

2. We must reinterpret Christology remembering that faith in Christ suggests a final fulfilment with partial signs of that now, and keeping in mind Jesus in his Jewish context.

3. Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels supports feminism, a prophet who breaks social taboos, proclaims a reversal of the social order where domination and oppression are ruled out in favour of equality and mutuality. Jesus says call no man Father, suggesting we must avoid oppressive social relations. Jesus tells us to obey God, not man, which is an enduring reminder to avoid oppressive social structures. He spoke of the Messiah not as a king but as
a servant, Mark 10:45 “The Son of Man came to be served, but to serve, and give his life as a ransom for many”. Leaders must be servants. Jesus shows special concern for women (Samaritan woman at the well (John 4), the Syro-Phoenician woman with a sick daughter (Mark 5), woman with flow of blood (also Mark 5).

4. Jesus, the homeless Jewish prophet, as liberator subverts structures of oppression and embodies a new order based on mutuality (equality, with sharing as in Acts 2:44 where the disciples had ‘everything in common”). He seems to demolish parts of the Levitical code – in which women are unclean when menstruating, you cannot work ont he Sabbath and certain foods are unclean (see Mark 7, “Jesus declared all foods clean). He didn’t allow the Pharisees to stone the woman caught in the very act of adultery (John 8 link with Leviticus 20:10 “If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbour, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death”).

5. Christ is in a dynamic relationship with redeemed humanity (vine and branches image in John 15). He cannot be “encapsulated one-for-all in the historical Jesus” (Sexism & God-talk p. 138). Immanence of God as Being not transcendence of God as above and “Lord”.