By Dean Kalimniou
Among the Gospel narratives, there exists an encounter so rich in meaning that it lends itself to endless meditation: the meeting of Christ with the Samaritan Woman at Jacob’s well. Though John records the encounter as dialogue, its symbolic texture renders it parabolic, summoning interpretations that reach beyond the immediate.
In this brief yet profound exchange, a woman whose existence has been circumscribed by social disdain and patriarchal suspicion becomes the recipient of revelation, the vessel of theological truth, and the herald of salvation to her community.
Orthodox tradition names her Fotini, Equal to the Apostles, and through her, we discern the subversion of the oppressive structures that sought to confine her.
The circumstances of the encounter carry a startling audacity. Jesus converses with a woman, a Samaritan, in public, and at midday. Every element of the scene subverts accepted proprieties. He crosses boundaries of gender, religion, propriety and ethnicity, collapsing the barriers that men had erected to police interaction and enforce segregation.
The very place is emblematic: the well, source of life in arid landscapes and a symbol of the womb, becomes the stage upon which a dialogue unfolds concerning the deeper draught of living water. Scholars such as Musa Dube have perceived here a dismantling of imperial hierarchies, for in allowing the Samaritan woman to speak, to question, and to challenge, Christ endows her with subjecthood rather than objecthood.
Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza would call this a confrontation with kyriarchy: the system of interlocking dominations in which women, foreigners, and the disenfranchised are silenced. Yet at this well, silence is transfigured into voice, and voice into active witness.
Much ink has been spilled over the cryptic reference to her “five husbands” and the man with whom she presently lives. Centuries of interpreters have read in this detail the sign of moral failing. A patriarchal gaze, accustomed to judging female identity through sexuality, has exaggerated this point. Yet philological nuance and historical awareness invite a gentler understanding.
The Greek word ἀνήρ designates both husband and man, and the realities of widowhood, forced remarriage, or unilateral divorce, realities over which women had little say, hover over the text. What emerges is less the portrait of a libertine than of one battered by circumstance. The shame that others projected upon her was arguably the product of systemic forces rather than personal wantonness. Even if it was her personal choice, Christ transcends stigma, offering her instead the dignity of dialogue.
What is striking is the length and depth of their conversation. The account in the Gospel of John grants her more sustained theological discourse with Christ than any of his male interlocutors. She questions, she reasons, and she ventures into the contested terrain of worship, daring to engage with Christ on matters of sacred geography and true devotion, on an equal basis. The revelation she receives is astonishing in its directness: “I am he.” In few other places does Christ unveil his messianic identity with such clarity.
In the vision of feminist scholar Sandra Schneiders, this woman is cast as the archetypal disciple: an agent of inquiry, a seeker of truth, and a herald of salvation, who receives revelation and immediately sets about its proclamation. There can be nothing more empowering.
The Fathers of the Church articulated a similar perspective. St John Chrysostom marvels at her prudence. With delicacy and wisdom, she does not order her townsfolk to believe but instead invites them in a spirit of collegiality: “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did.” Chrysostom praises her discernment, observing that she transforms even what could have shamed her into the very substance of her testimony.
Her honesty, her willingness to expose herself for truth, and her courage before communal scorn become the hallmarks of her apostleship. It is no coincidence, therefore, that Orthodox liturgy honours her as Isapostolos, a title also awarded to Constantine, the Emperor.
Orthodox hymnography deepens this recognition. In the apolytikion of the Sunday of the Samaritan Woman we hear: “When Thou didst come to the well, O Fountain of wonders, the Samaritan Woman found Thee, the water of wisdom, and having drunk abundantly, she inherited the Kingdom on high forever.” The kontakion continues: “Coming to the well in faith, the Samaritan Woman beheld Thee, the Water of Wisdom; wherefore she drank abundantly and inherited the Kingdom on high forever.”
For her feast, the hymns acclaim: “All illustrious Fotini, the Samaritan Woman, thou didst abandon the water of the well, and with greater fervour thou didst drink of the water of wisdom. Thou didst also receive the crown of glory, for thou wast glorified by the Lord.” Another sticheron praises her martyrdom: “Having drunk of the divine water, O glorious one, thou didst quench the burning of idolatry; and with the streams of thy blood thou didst water the Church, O Fotini, Equal to the Apostles.”
These hymns, echoing across the centuries, weave together her initial encounter with Christ and her ultimate witness in martyrdom. They portray her as one who abandoned the perishable water of Jacob’s well for the inexhaustible draught of divine wisdom, who, having tasted of that living stream, poured it forth abundantly upon her people, and who finally irrigated the Church itself with the blood of her confession.
In the liturgical imagination she becomes both vessel and fountain: first filled with the gift of Christ, then emptied in sacrifice, until her life itself becomes the river that waters the Kingdom. To frame such imagery around a woman and an outcast has profound feminist resonance, for it shows that the liturgical tradition itself preserves and proclaims female authority, theological discernment, and apostolic courage.
That the Church’s imagination was seized early by her figure is evident from the catacombs of the fourth century. On the Via Latina in Rome, frescoes already depict Christ with Fotini at the well, enshrining her encounter in the earliest Christian imagination. To immortalise her in sacred art at so early a stage is to affirm that the community of faith perceived her story as foundational, no less integral than the Passion narratives or the triumphs of the martyrs. The well thus became inscribed not only in words but also in images, and her dialogue became a visual catechesis of baptism, revelation, and witness.
The implications are profound. Where patriarchy relegates, Christ restores. Where human judgment condemns, divine revelation confers dignity. The very act of entrusting to a woman the announcement that led her city to believe constitutes an inversion of established hierarchies.
The first theologian of the Johannine Gospel is a Samaritan woman. The first missionary to the Samaritans is she, even in the face of the social unacceptability of women in the time to speak in public. Feminist readers and faithful are right to perceive here a narrative that resists the reduction of women to silence or shame. Orthodox hymnography confirms this, reinforcing that the tradition itself preserves memory of women whose voices carried the good news into new lands.
Intersectional analysis illuminates her position. Fotini endures a threefold marginalisation: as woman, as Samaritan, and as one burdened with social suspicion. Yet the Gospel transforms these disadvantages into signs of divine preference. In speaking with her, Christ demonstrates that salvation is not mediated through pedigree or prestige. He chooses as interlocutor and witness one whom society had set aside.
This is the heart of the story: that divine revelation privileges those denied privilege, and that the very structures intended to oppress become the stage upon which salvation is declared.
The encounter at the well is therefore more than a private moment of consolation. It is a manifesto of inclusion, a proclamation that the outcast may be the apostle, and that the one dismissed by patriarchy may be the bearer of living water. The Orthodox Church, through its hymnody and iconography, has long acknowledged this truth.
Feminist theology renders explicit what the tradition has always maintained: that the Gospel lifts women from the margins and places them in the centre, not as ornaments of devotion or submission, but instead, as dominant pillars of proclamation.
In Fotini we behold a figure who resisted the strictures of patriarchal judgment and transformed the stigma imposed upon her into the very source of liberation. She emerges as a fountain for generations, transfiguring her marginalisation into authority. Through her, Christ declared that living water flows first to those whom the world has silenced, that the despised may become teachers, and that women’s experiences, so often dismissed as peripheral, are in truth central to salvation.
Consequently, our own renewal comes whenever women’s voices break through the walls of exclusion, whenever their dignity is affirmed in the face of systemic negation, and whenever their witness is proclaimed with the authority that the Gospel itself confers. The well of Jacob, once bound in stone, becomes through her an inexhaustible spring of feminist memory, testifying that wherever women rise against erasure, the promise of life surges forth, and those who drink shall never thirst again.
