Gender and Theology

Question 1

Who are the two key thinkers?

Answer 1

• Rosemary Radford Ruether.
• Mary Daly.

Question 2

______ mutuality

Answer 2

Biophilic mutuality- humanity with respect and mutuality.

God doesn’t see men as superior.

Question 3

What does Ruether critique?

Answer 3

The maleness of Christ.

Christianity is distorted by a patriarchal society. Specifically abortion and Catholic’s forbidding Women’s ordination.

Question 4

Ruether’s challenge to Jesus:

Answer 4

The ‘Davidic Messiah’ is:
- Future King of new Kingdom.
- Son of David.
- A warrior.
- Would lead his people to victory and restore power to Israel.
- Son of God and is the Son of Man as he represents people before God.

So, Daly says ‘The Messiah can only be imagined as a male’.

She rejects this view, said he was the ‘Servant King’.

Question 5

Servant King:

Answer 5

• Served people, not an authority.
  YET, contradicts Romans, ‘let every person be subject to the governing authorities’.
  But does also fit in with Bartimaeus.
• Critical of authorities, like Pontius Pilate, who orders his crucifixion.
• Political threat, ‘I came to bring a sword not peace’.
• Saw people as equal. John 13:2, washed disciples feet.

Question 6

Quote about Servant King:

Answer 6

‘By becoming a servant of God he is freed from bondage of all human masters’.

Question 7

God as female wisdom:

Answer 7

• She draws up on the principle of wisdom, called ‘Sophia’ in Greek.
• God is associated with wisdom, so he was also seen in female terms.
• Jesus is the ‘incarnation of wisdom’ so whilst he is male in physicality, he embodies female mentalities.

Question 8

Context to RRR:

Answer 8

• Involved in female Civil Rights Movement.
• Eco-feminist.
• Book ‘Sexism and God Talk’.

Question 9

What term does RRR coin?

Answer 9

• Goddess.
• Calls God ‘Gaia’- Greek Goddess of the earth.
• Female qualities of God.
• Thealogy.

Question 10

Challenges to RRR:

Answer 10

Simon Chan.
You cannot rewrite the bible.
The trinitarian language of the Bible is imperative, God as Father, Son and the Holy Spirit.
‘Almighty Father’ is important to Catholic Church’s prayer.

We can not strip God of his male identity.

‘Devotion to the Goddess Kali, for instance, has never caused better treatment of women’.

Question 11

Mary Daly famous quote:

Answer 11

• If God is male, then male is God.

Men become like ‘God’s’ in society.

Question 12

Nietzsche:

Answer 12

God is like Appollonian, the rational male side.
Yet the Donysian is the female side, creativity but also chaos.

Question 13

What is the main basis to Daly’s argument?

Answer 13

Religion creates a ‘three-headed monster’ of sexism, racism and classism.

Question 14

Who does Daly criticise?

Answer 14

• Tertullian for saying women were ‘the Devil’s gateway ‘.
• Aquinas saying women were ‘misbegotten men’.

Question 15

God should be _____

Answer 15

Castrated.

We need to remove androcentric language, like God as ‘Father’.

Question 16

What modern theologians does she criticise?

Answer 16

• Bonhoeffer for insisting women should be subject to husbands.

Question 17

What trinity does Daly come up with?

Answer 17

• Unholy Trinity.

Rape

Genocide

War

Question 18

Problems with her focus on Rape:

Answer 18

Rape typically states that it is women that are raped.
Isn’t there a gender inequality here?
She uses this to her advantage.
Women also watch pornography.

Question 19

Rape:

Answer 19

• Rapism.
  Culture of Rape that is all violent oppression.
  It is part of a culture that oppresses women. Can men not be raped?

Women become ‘patriarchally possessed’ because they do not realise how imprisoned they are.

Calls leaders of society, ‘Sovereigns of Sado- Society’.
‘Arm chair rapists’- culture of things like pornography.

Question 20

Examples of Rape in the Bible:

Answer 20

• The Bible goes against Rape.
• Sodom and Gomorrah, burns down the town in ‘brimstone and fire’ because of this.
• Bible goes FOR Rape, Judges, ‘you can do to them whatever you wish’.
  But we should surely not take the Bible too literally, what about the beheading of John the Baptist?

Question 21

Examples of Rape:

Answer 21

2000 women raped every week.

But is this really a religious dichotomy???

Question 22

Genocide:

Answer 22

• Link between genocide and rape.
• Sexual animosity of men fuels militaristic attitudes of men.
• Genocide because of male need for violence.

Question 23

War:

Answer 23

• Inevitable result of a male-dominated society.
• Men justify wars with what she calls ‘phallic morality’.

IMO, Daly is pointed out a MALE problem, not a CHRISTIAN problem.

Numbers- ‘kill every woman that has slept with a man’.

Question 24

What does Daly think we should do?

Answer 24

‘To be female is to be deviant’.
‘assuming the role of a witch’- but the Salem witch hunts???

• Reject laws because they are man-made.

Question 25

Mary Daly conclusion:

Answer 25

Jesus is the ‘legitimisation of the rape of all women’.

Question 26

Mary Daly and spirituality:

Answer 26

• We should overturn all aspects of classical theism because they are made by God.
• Instead, we should go to ‘quintessence’, ‘the highest essence of being’.
• Pagan, Gaia idea of God. Found in nature.

Question 27

Critiques:

Answer 27

• It is not as simple and saying ‘God is male’.

Fatherhood is unique, not important that he is male.
God has ‘deep compassion’, not inherently male.

Question 28

Alternative opinion:

Answer 28

Fiorenza.

Daly is too narrow.
The sexism is an interpretation.

In Matthew, a woman poured perfume over Jesus. Men get angry at her, and he says ‘Why are you bothering this woman?’