Taking Our Place: Substitution,Human Agency,and Feminine Sin

Abstract

While acknowledging that church teachings about substitutionary atonement have served to disempower women, this article argues that a reconstrual of this doctrine can, in fact, promote human agency. Because Christ our Representative has taken our place in relation to that which incapacitates us, women are freed from the ‘feminine sins’ of self-deprecation and passivity to exercise power as agents. First, the author explains the importance of conceiving of substitution apart from understandings of satisfaction theory that perpetuate violence. Then she rehearses how feminist theologians have understood substitution to inhibit agency. Finally (in conversation with Dorothee Sölle and Karl Barth), she examines how a reconstrual of substitutionary atonement, understood within a representational framework, might contribute to an adequate feminist soteriology by championing women's ‘irreplaccability,’ thus ensuring their power.