More about that Canaanite woman
Posted by Brian August 30, 2005
I ran across some more thoughts about this Gospel passage recently, from another Anglican/Episcopal priest, Preston. Here is Preston’s post:
Proper 15, Year A: St. Augustine on the Canaanite Woman
He seems to take issue with the interpretation which Alma and Jen preached about, and which I wrote about earlier. If you’ve got time, I encourage you to read those links. Well, you can skip what I wrote if you want, but read the others. 
Augustine saw the Canaanite woman as a figure of the Church. Christ is teaching the church the value of humility. While I agree that the Church needs to learn humility, I’m a little skeptical that this is what’s going on in this story.
Anyway, Preston’s post is interesting, and the comments he and others left are even more interesting. I also put in my two cents over there at his blog.
It seems to me like the Augustine interpretation is a variation of what I called the “ironic interpretation”–except that Augustine postulates that Jesus’ pedagogical attitude is adopted for the sake of the woman herself, rather than the disciples. (And–well, there’s no irony.)
I suppose my main objection to that reading, beyond a simple instinct of mistrust for allegorical reading, is that teaching a lesson of humility to the downtrodden and despised is superfluous and generally harmful. When people already think of themselves as dogs, why would Jesus, or any of us, want to teach them a lesson that reinforces such “humility?” If you want to go with this reading, the woman has to become symbolic of someone/something else (church), because on her own, she is a pitiable figure, not an arrogant one who needs to be taught her place. The allegorical step is necessary to make the reading morally palatable.
In addition, I don’t think that it’s necessary to assume that because Jesus might have learned something (in this encounter and in others), that Jesus was therefore “sinful.” To make this assumption buys into the Platonic idea of perfection, that it is necessarily static. My real feeling on this is, if Jesus didn’t ever learn anything, he wasn’t really human. And Jesus not being human is quite as dangerous theologically as Jesus sinning–in both errors, our soteriology is at stake.
Hey, this was a fun way to start my day. I got to write the words “Platonic” and “soteriology” in a comment. Doesn’t happen every day, you know?
Thanks, JTB. Your comment is awesome, and I totally agree.
Let me encourage everyone to use words like Platonic and soteriology whenever possible here.