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Could Our Savior Have Been a Woman?

The Relevance of Jesus' Gender for His Incarnational Mission

Paper for the 54th Annual Meetings of the Evangelical Theological Society

Toronto, Ontario, November 20, 2002

Bruce A. Ware

Senior Associate Dean, School of Theology

Professor of Christian Theology

The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky

Introduction

1) Jesus Christ of Nazareth was fully God.

2) Jesus Christ of Nazareth was fully human.

3) Jesus Christ of Nazareth was a male human being.

All three of these statements are judged to be true in the orthodox tradition, and each is

borne out by abundant biblical testimony. The first two of these are often stated together as
necessarily true for the incarnation and substitutionary atonement to occur. Anselm`s classic
treatment, Cur Deus Homo, spells out why an atoning sacrifice would have required Jesus to be
both divine and human divine, to be of sufficient value to pay fully and finally for the sin of the
world and satisfy the offence against the honor of God; human, to die as a fit substitute in our
place. But, the question of whether Jesus had to be a male human being has seldom been
discussed, until recently. Was his male gender a merely arbitrary feature of the incarnational
design? Did the Father throw dice or draw straws in choosing to send the Messiah as a male
human being? Or, was the male gender of Jesus essential to the reality of his incarnational
identity and to the accomplishment of his incarnational mission? That is, did Jesus have to be
male, or could our Savior have been a woman?

A couple of recent developments raise this question to a level of higher poignancy. I

have in mind, first, the publication in 1995 of The New Testament and Psalms: An Inclusive
Version,

in which the male gender of Jesus was decided not to have any christological

significance, or significance for salvation.

As the editors explain,

When in the Gospels the historical person, Jesus, is referred to as son, the word is
retained. But when Jesus is called Son of God or Son of the Blessed One, and the
maleness of the historical person Jesus is not relevant, but the Son`s intimate relation to
the Father is being spoken about (see Mt 11.25-27), the formal equivalent Child is

Victor R. Gold, Thomas L. Hoyt, Jr., Sharon H. Ringe, Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, Burton H. Throckmorton, Jr.,

and Barbara A. Withers, eds., The New Testament and Psalms: An Inclusive Version (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1995).

Ibid., xvii.