When Did we See You Naked?: Jesus as a Victim of Sexual Abuse

by Jayme Reaves, David Tombs (Editor), Rocio Figueroa (Editor)

Was the stripping and exposure of Jesus a form of sexual abuse? If so, why does such a reading of Jesus’ suffering matter? The combined impact of the #MeToo movement and a further wave of global revelations on church sexual abuse have given renewed significance to recent work naming Jesus as a victim of sexual abuse. Timely and provocative "When did we see you naked?" presents the arguments for reading Christ as an abuse victim, as well as exploring how the position might be critiqued, and what implications and applications it might offer to the Church.

Genres: Theology, Academic

256 pages, Paperback

Published March 30, 2021

Reviews

[Shawn Enright · Rating 4 out of 5]

A foundational work in intersectional theology. Perhaps no book has so changed how I see Jesus and His passion.

Again, this may appear in my thesis, so I won't provide a long form review here. I also recorded an podcast on this topic and used bits of the book for citations. Here's the link: https://open.substack.com/pub/shawnen...

[Valerie H Hobbs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reeves, Tombs and Figueroa’s book offers us detail around the historical act of crucifixion itself - what it intends, what it enacts, what it represents. Crucifixion, as a form of public execution was a deterrent, intended to shame and humiliate, to dishonour. The book guides us through what Jeremy Punt, when talking specifically about the letters of the Apostle Paul, calls a “matrix” of meaning within which the sexual abuse of Jesus may be implied.

As we encounter the stripping of Jesus in the Bible, his torture and humiliation, his crucifixion, we carry with us all that is right in front of us, this historical and literary Biblical context alongside the expertise of victims of domestic violence and those who advocate for them - All together, these shade the meaning of Jesus’s crucifixion.

When have we seen Jesus naked? Most of us - we have not. Perhaps we are still ashamed of him. Yet we must see. For, paraphrasing the words of Rocio Figueroa and David Tombs in the closing chapter, seeing Jesus’s innocence, partaking in his innocence, we now see our innocence.

[Thomas Creedy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Completely unconvinced by the central argument of the book.

In spite of that there were a number of chapters with some useful reflections/observations, but these were in stark and contrasting minority to some weaker chapters accepting the premise and making it worse. I would argue that some of these chapters were not worth publishing.

There may be some value in a very few chapters of this book for some practitioners and pastors - but by and large this is a book I wouldn’t recommend to anyone, for any reason. At one point one of the chapters points out the untruth of the premise that Jesus was a victim of sexual abuse AND how it doesn’t ‘help’. Genuinely bizarre.