Did God Really Say? Contemporary Critical Feminist Theory's Lie to Women

The Serpent’s Question

The first lie ever told to a woman was not about her body. It was about her identity. In Genesis 3, the serpent does not open with an insult. He opens with a question: “Did God really say?” (Genesis 3:1). That question is the template for every lie that follows it, including the ones women are told today.

Eve was not deceived by an obvious falsehood. She was deceived by a reframing. The serpent suggested that God's word was restrictive rather than generous, that God was withholding something good from her, and that the way to become “her true self” was to go against God’s command (Genesis 3:4-5). Paul later calls this “the serpent's cunning” and warns that our minds can be led astray from a sincere devotion to Christ the same way (2 Corinthians 11:3).

Eve was created in God’s image (Genesis 1:27), fully human with dignity and worth, alongside Adam. Scripture calls her a strong helper. She did not need the serpent to tell her who she was. Her identity was already spoken by God. She needed to trust the One who made her.

The result of believing the lie was neither the godlike status nor the greater wisdom the serpent implied she would gain. She was already created in His image. Rather, the result was a fracture in the relationship with God and with man. Shame entered (Genesis 3:7). Blame entered, man against woman (Genesis 3:12). The relationship between the sexes became distorted into one marked by desire and domination rather than oneness and partnership (Genesis 3:16). Creation itself was subjected to futility (Romans 8:20). The eye-opening, god-like self-identity the serpent promised only brought her—and Adam, who was with her—exile from God’s presence and the garden (Genesis 3:23-24). That is the pattern—the promise of self-authored identity, the reality of destruction and alienation—then and now.

Feminist Theory’s Version of the Question

Contemporary Critical Feminist Theory (CCFT) asks a version of the same question, dressed in academic language. Judith Butler, one of CCFT’s foundational thinkers, argues that gender is not a stable given but something produced through repeated social performance. Here, a woman's identity is not received from God. It is instead constructed by men, by society, by powerful systems and structures; therefore, it can be deconstructed and reconstructed on the woman’s own terms.

CCFT is not merely telling women to feel empowered. It claims that categories like “woman” have historically been used to organize bodies, assign roles, and limit freedom, and that examining how those categories were constructed is the path to liberation from oppressive structures. The ultimate goal of this liberation is to deconstruct oppressive structures and reconstruct women based on whatever identity each woman chooses to create.

The Serpent’s Promise, Then and Now

Prominent womanist (black feminist theology) scholar bell hooks [sic] wrote, “If any female feels she needs anything beyond herself to legitimate and validate her existence, she is already giving away her power to be self-defining, her agency.”[i] For hooks, feminist liberation begins the moment a woman stops looking outside herself for permission to exist.

This is the serpent’s promise: “You will be like God” (Genesis 3:5)—you will need no one and can decide good and evil for yourself. hooks is not wrong that some women have looked to the wrong sources for validation and identity. But the correction to that error is not for women to redefine themselves in the areas of deepest meaning. Eve was already named good by God and given an identity before the serpent ever spoke, before any attempt at self-definition was ever made.

Identity Settled in Christ

Scripture locates identity in the God who made you and Jesus Christ who redeems you. “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb” (Psalm 139:13). To be a woman is not performative. To be a woman is an act of God’s creation expressed through the unique personalities of each woman. It is important to note that, though there may be distinct expressions of womanhood, those expressions are never to blur the line between womanhood and manhood. Categories of male and female are not only biblical, but society is also dependent upon them for the continual reproduction of the human race. Within the church, these categories do not dissolve, but we see a confirmation of God’s created design and an equality of value. Equality of worth is not sameness of design.

The cross and Scripture, not feminism, are where a woman's true identity is settled. Christ did not come to affirm every self-narrative. He came to die for sinners and rise so that “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation" (2 Corinthians 5:17). That newness is not self-authored. It is given.

The serpent's question was never really about information. Eve knew what God said. The question was designed to make her doubt whether God's word was trustworthy and whether his design for her was good. CCFT asks women to answer that same question by looking inward. Scripture asks us to answer it by looking to the One who created us in the beginning. Did God really say who you are? Yes. And it was better than anything the serpent, ancient or academic, has ever offered.

Footnotes:

[i]  hooks, bell. Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics (p. 95). (Function). Kindle Edition.