Abstract
This study on First Peter focuses primarily on 1 Peter 3:1–6(7) and regards it as a “mimicry” of, and “collusion” with, the androcentric and colonialist structures of Roman imperial power—a stance with fateful consequences for Christianity ever since. Underlying the work appears to be a doctoral dissertation written under Fernando Segovia as advisor. Dr. Bird teaches in the Department of Religion and Philosophy at Greensboro College, North Carolina. By her own account (pp. 1–2), Bird was deeply affected by an experience of the appalling abuse of a female neighbor as she embarked upon her study of 1 Peter. This experience not only accompanied her investigation of the letter but affected the manner in which Bird has read 1 Peter 3:1–7 and constructed its social situation and rhetoric. The study opens with a limited sketch of previous scholarship on 1 Peter, primarily research on its household management material (Chapter 1, pp. 5–36) and a discussion of her own “new methodology” (incorporating “feminist, postcolonial and material critiques”) for grasping the direction and dynamics of the text (Chapter 2, pp. 37–60). Chapter 3 (pp. 61–85) looks at the appellations of “aliens and strangers” (1:1; 2:11) and “royal priesthood and holy nation” (2:9), together with the exhortation to “honor the emperor” (2:17) as indicators of a rhetoric that urges submission to Roman rule and “ensures the perpetual mimicry of Empire and its power relations within these faith communities” (p. 85). A consideration of the letter's construction of women/wives in 3:1–6 (Chapter 4, pp. 86–109) shows that “their circumscribed subjectivity [is] prescribed by kyriarchal structures and power relations, created and sustained by abusive power dynamics” (p. 86). Translated, this means that the author, in collusion with colonialist Roman power, urges not only wives but all women to shut up and submit to male authority. “The women are to know their place and stay in line,” Chapter 5 (pp. 110–34) likewise concludes. “Their position is not one of freedom; rather the author of 1 Peter limits the agency of women, circumscribing their activity within the household domain” (p. 133). A final chapter (pp. 135–44) summarizes results and suggests how this new method might be applied to other biblical passages.
This volume is more a reflection on First Peter than a reflection of the letter. It is an example of how First Peter comes across to a victim of abuse and wounding. Engagement with the standard exegetical literature on 1 Peter, on the other hand, is minimal in this study. Its opening review of research is an inadequate account of the main issues and major voices in exegesis of 1 Peter. Paul Achtemeier's major Hermeneia commentary on 1 Peter (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996) is never mentioned, and others, like Selwyn's classic commentary, only in passing. In fact it is difficult to see this as an exegetical study in any conventional sense. Following the oft-criticized path of David Balch (Let Wives be Submissive [Chico: Scholars Press, 1981]), Bird has chosen to restrict attention to the “household code” material, with inadequate exegesis of 3:1–7 itself and inadequate attention to what precedes and follows. Inspired by the criticism of Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Bird decides from the outset that the letter, in its adoption of the “Haustafel,” urges a subservient posture of not only wives but of women in general. This embrace of a “kyriarchal structure of the household and society” makes “these communities [those addressed in Ephesians, Colossians and 1 Peter] perfect targets for political cooptation by the Roman Empire” (p. 34).
The material preceding 3:1–7, Bird claims, signals only the dismal direction that the household code section will take: “In a fanciful transformation from refugee to royal priest, the members of these communities are simultaneously liberated or empowered and made into a pawn of the Empire. The true paupers now have no grounds by which they can challenge the injustices of their daily lives, because the theological identity of these communities is now in line with and supports imperial ideology” (p. 85). The Petrine Haustafel itself (2:18–3:7), Bird avers, is a case of “ambivalent mimicry.” “In rearticulating an aspect of the colonial kyriarchal structural system of relations [presumably 1 Peter 2:13–17], the author of the letter invokes within his discourse the very institution he might ultimately wish to disavow” (p. 104). This is tantamount to “accommodation” to the Empire's power (p. 106), a power and authority that “in this metonymy of presence, is then extended to the author of this letter, granting his exhortations and commands authoritative status” (p. 106).
What a simple solution to the authorship question—the letter's authority rests not on Petrine pedigree but on imperial power! The use of the Haustafel (in 1 Peter, Colossians, and Ephesians), with its mimicry and reinforcement of imperial power, must be judged, according to Bird, a regrettable “collusion with imperial power” (p. 108). The canonization of these collusive letters, in turn, has meant disastrous results for later Christian history. “It is precisely because of the presence in the Christian canon of texts such as 1 Peter, which reflect kyriarchal socio-cultural norms and power differential relations, that we still have the need for emancipatory movements within the church and Western societies today” (p. 109). Thus 1 Peter constitutes a double disaster for Christianity. Not only does it emasculate (de-ovararise?) the boldness and emancipatory power of the Christian gospel, but its presence in the church's canon and theology's “malestream” also constitutes a depressing and docile voice against emancipatory and egalitarian movements today.
“Suffering abused wives”? Not one explicit mention of suffering wives or of husbands physically abusing their wives is to be found in 3:1–7 or anywhere else in the letter. Bird, as do some other feminist scholars, assumes this, arbitrarily equating the situation of wives with that of slaves (2:18–20) and of Jesus Christ (2:21–24). Bird traces the suffering of wives not to their malignment as purported immoral followers of the Christ (2:12, 16; 3:14–15, 17; 4:1, 5, 12, 13,14–16, 19; 5:9) but to their subordinate social status as women and spouses. Despite what 3:1–7 does say—that wives' actions can have a positive effect on their husbands and win them as converts, that wives in their behavior replicate that of Jesus Christ, that in the household of God wives are “coheirs of the grace of life” (3:7)—Bird sees nothing positive here but only reinscriptions of imperial power and hierarchy. Contemporary abuse of women in any form, and spousal abuse in particular, is not only reprehensible but criminal. And it must be prosecuted. To imagine that 1 Peter 3:1–6 speaks of physical or psychological abuse of wives, or to claim that it is actually implied, however, is to substitute eisegesis for exegesis.
Caveat lector! This is not an exegetical examination of the Petrine text in the conventional sense. It is rather a mélange of “feminist, post colonial, and materialist” musing on 1 Peter that produces a rather grim verdict on the letter and on 3:1–7 in particular. Bird finds little here of positive value, certainly no grace or good news, contrary to what the Petrine author set out to proclaim (1:2, 12, 25; 4:17; 5:5, 10, 12–and especially 3:7: “coheirs of the grace of life”). Instead, Bird indicts the author of 1 Peter of a massive collusion with Roman imperial ideology and of a reinscription of the subjugationist policies of imperial and “kyriarchal” rule that in its own day subverted any attempt at liberation and equality, especially of women, and in the long history of Christianity has served as a sacred legitimation of male spousal abuse and male subjugation and exploitation of women.
The book and its approach raises an urgent question we face in exegesis today, especially in respect to issues of gender and gender relations, in antiquity and in the present. Should the political, social and cultural conditions of past and present be equated with no distinctions? To what extent should the experience of abuse suffered by an interpreter today (as in Bird's experience of her female neighbor) inform and color an exegesis of ancient texts, especially those like 1 Peter, that do not explicitly speak of wives suffering at the hand of abusive husbands (pace Bird)? How does 1 Peter 3:1–7 read when considered not in the light of present gender realities but in the historical and cultural context of its own time? Bird says little of this and does not engage with Elliott (1 Peter; 2000: 550–99) on the hermeneutical problem posed by this text. Is it ever possible to mention imperial power without colluding with it? What makes readers (us all) blind to subversive and counter-cultural elements of biblical texts, as seems to be the case with Bird on 1 Peter? How, if at all possible, can this blindness be overcome? Or are we no more than perpetual captives to our own constructions, one and all?
Bird's complaint is not only with 1 Peter, as she reads it, but with the canonization of this letter and the use made of this biblical writing in the course of Christian history. This especially concerns the use made of these texts to excuse and give sacred sanction to the deplorable suppression and abuse of women in religious institutions and society. If this study contains a scintilla of plausibility and cogency, why should not 1 Peter and its ilk be booted from the canon and silenced in the churches? Why should it not be forbidden as the subject of future dissertations? Anyone looking for some good news communicated by this letter—in its original setting and as read today—will have to turn elsewhere for guidance, or so Bird would have us conclude.
This study, while not a conventional exegesis, is a passionate cri de coeur. Bird writes not only as a witness of a neighbor's physical abuse (pp. 1–2) but “as a woman who has embraced such silencing [of women in the church] to my own detriment, taught it to the detriment of others, and who witnesses it every day in various forms around me” (p. 142). These depressing experiences have framed this book and have cast a long shadow over her take on this Petrine text. I—and many readers will surely agree—judge this abuse and silencing to be deplorable and in no way justifiable, whether by custom or canonical sanction. Bird sensitizes us to the wounded histories that many readers of both genders and many victims of colonial oppression bring to their study of this and other biblical texts. At the same time, my concern as an exegete is whether this study, so personally framed and so outfitted with feminist, postcolonial, and materialist lenses, has advanced our understanding of the actual content and aim, situation and strategy of this biblical letter in its own ancient context. I cannot see where it has—but then I bring a totally different and privileged male experience to the reading of this biblical text. I expect the study will reckon less in studies on 1 Peter than as a voice in feminist critiques of “malestream” exegesis. For anyone wondering how one's own personal history affects a reading of ancient canonical texts, here is one place to start.