Gender Theo Flashcards
Reform Feminist theology
The Bible can be interpreted in a feminist way and therefore Christianity has the potential to be compatible with feminism. However currently it is sexist because it has undergone patriarchalization:
Reuther - hermenutics
Hermeneutics
Social relationships of women in the bible being weak and passive are arhaic ‘the lesser nature thus confirms the females subdgugation’
Early scripture supresses role of women eg)Mary Magdalene or prophets priscilla and Maximilla
Priscila had vision of Jesus ‘in the form of a women clad in bright grament’
Interpretation of the bible must be critical , sexism is a sin
Reuther on Gods gender
Is idolatry to define god in the masculine – serves men’s selfish interests
See god a genderless
Essense of Christ as divine logos
‘humanness is more fundamental then differences in gender ‘ - gender of christ not important
In hebrew bible ‘yahweh’ is the name of god - ‘no name’
Chruch should reprent patriarchal ideals and see the grace of truth (john 1)
Jesus ‘emptied himself into the form of a servant’, god is without gender, thus jesus’ gender is irrelevant to his salvation, messiah is a genderless idea
The Golden thread
- The golden thread is Reuther’s idea that there is a theme of liberation, including supporting feminist causes, in the Bible. This is a thread of validity, which we can disentangle from the patriarchal influences.
-Two themes of liberation and sexism are inconsistent with each other, thus not gods authentic revelation
Reuther describes this golden thread as the ‘prophetic-liberating tradition’. It includes:
God’s defence the oppressed such freeing the Jews in Exodus.
Jesus’ treatment of marginalised people (including the poor and women).
Jesus’ criticism of the established religious views that serve to justify and sanctify the dominant, unjust social order.
Jesus’ moral teachings like the golden rule.
-the golden thread acts as authentic revelation, anything is else written by men influenced by the patriarch
-Allows us a standard to compare other parts of the bible and reject those that do not fit true liberation
- Patriarchy is the idolizing of the male as representing the divine so it must be denounced as idolatry and blasphemy.
Logical – look to biblical evidence
The women at the well - Jesus began a conversation with a female Samaritan at a well by asking her for a drink, which was unheard of as the ancient Jewish view was that Samaritans were unclean
See Jesus’ willingness to depart from discriminatory culture of the time
The adulterous women - Jesus said: “let whoever is without sin cast the first stone”, Jesus doesn’t condemn her but says she must depart sin – opposes use of violence to control sexual behaviour
Galatians- Probably the most significant pro-liberation & feminist Bible verse is from St Paul:
“There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ”. Galatians 3:28.
The woman who had been bleeding for 12 years ‘Daughter, you’re faith as made you well, go in peace’
Reuther - Male saviour
yes, a male saviour can save women
Reuther makes her own counter argument here to say that it is possible if the more radical traditions are rediscovered.
jesus’ roles as messiah deliberately challenged the expectations of the warrior king.
his teaching was more about justice and dignity for the marginalised than worldly power.
the kingdom of god as he presents it is not just a reward but healing and restorative.
The new age and eschatological community
-God is here now, in the community realised
-Reuther argues for a realised eschatology – idea of a redeemed community
-clericalism (male priesthood alone) is part of patriarchy and should be rejected
Reminds us of early church eg) Montanism had women leaders
Ruether - new antipatriarchal communities
one of Reuther’s concerns is that churches have lost their egalitarian roots. her argument is that historical evidence gives churches the authority they need to change.
Jesus says to his followers in john’s gospel, ‘i have called you friends, because i have made known to you everything that i have heard from my father’. - basis in equality and freinsdhip
–language of god the father has often become a justification for the patriarchy rather than a challenge
Reuther - Apophatic language
the apophatic path and inclusive language
God is infinite and human language is not, all language referring to god must be based in the apophatic assumption that god is beyond language and gender.
See patriarchal tendency; male language describes transcendence, female language describes immanence
Ultimately; Gendered language may act as analogy or symbol of how humans experience god.
is true to say god is as much female and he is not male and vice versa
feminist theology is not claiming exclusive female language but warning against solely male.
Reuther -Monotheism/ goddess theology
Reuther argues that in order to understand how Christian theology has developed its patriarchy, we must go back to before this was the case. she is struck by polytheistic religions which are less sexist than monotheistic religions. monotheism:
reinforces patriarchal hierarchy where the single god exerts authority over the world
justifies male superiority over women as men consider this a part of the natural hierarchy
– Roots of Judaism were not monotethistsc
Isiah ‘ now i will cry out like a women in labour, i will gasp and pant’
uses the mother analogy to express god’s suffering love for the people.
– in the roots of Judaism from which Christianity developed, God was far less male orientated
MOTHER: In a passage from the Prophet Isaiah, God is depicted as the mother Goddess going through the pain of childbirth à Isaiah uses the mother analogy as a means of expressing God’s suffering love for Israelite people because of their faithfulness: “I will cry out like a woman in labour” (Isaiah)
SOPHIA: Ruether identifies the Jewish wisdom tradition the title of “Sophia”, which she argues was used as a metaphor for the ‘Logos ‘ (Word of God)
-before the maleness of Jesus brought forward the preference for male terms to describe the Trinity à highlights how the Trinity if fundamentally a relational and gender-inclusive spiritual experience which has been misinterpreted by the patriarchy
god as female wisdom principle
Wisdom historically understood as divine and in female terms, the Greek Sophia
wisdom of Solomon - she is described as ‘a breath of the power of god’ and ‘a reflection of his eternal light’, or even king Solomon’s bride.
‘she is the breath of the power of god’/ for wisdom is a loving spirit, for god is witness of her reigns’
-Christianity preserves this feminine aspect in the incarnation and trinity.
–in johns gospel he is ‘eternal wisdom’
Daly -Radical feminism
Radical Feminism
women must abandon christianity for a post-christian spirituality. she drew attention to the marginalisation of women in the church in the hope that it would cause reforms in organisation and theology.
earlier times women has achieved a spiritual relationship with nature that had been destroyed by patriarchal societies using god.
Developed nietzsche’s ideas on reusing and rediscovering archaic meanings of words and she used this to uncover this relationship with nature
he used language to shift consciousness. she describes herself as a traveller seeking out ways to live outside of a patriarchy.
she believes these doctrines have been developed by men to favour men, so much that even calling god female would not change his male essence
Mary Daly: The maleness of God
Daly argued that God being male gave people the concept that power was a male thing, not female.
Daly put it like this: “If God is male, then the male is God”.
-allows the function of making male supremacy to seem like a fact of the universe which could not be challenged.
Daly’s solution: “God” as a verb. Daly claimed the concept of God needed to be castrated by referring to God as a ‘she’ but also by changing the meaning of God from a noun to a verb, so people think of God as ‘be-ing’ rather than ‘a being’,
-logical since verbs are beyond the masculine/feminine description.
This encourages challenging the tendency to view structural oppression as just the way things are; as ‘a being’, rather than a process of be-ing that depends on choice and submission for its continued being
Verb allows a flexibility to chnge and move from unjust state
Daly -New language and being
Transvaluation requires radical reinvention of language
the patriarchal world is characterised thus
foreground: the world dominated by patriarchal apollonian values. it is a false world, sucking the life-force out of women and nature.
females who gain power from men are called henchwomen.
background: the existence which is the world of women and true be-ing.
women have become used to living in the shadow of men but the background comes from before that and is energetic and close to the reality of be-ing.
Archaic language reconnects women to nature or being
Some words were foreground- falsely designed to disempower eg} witch/hag/crone
But become empowering as background words
Daly -The bible; the unholy trinity
The most unholy trinity
the most unholy trinity of rape, genocide and war is a logical expression of phallocentric power’:
rape: a phallocentric rape culture is one based on power and not on community. it is both literal and metaphorical. metaphorically, Christianity has been the major reason why women have been abused and treated as passive objects.
genocide: a rape culture represents an alienated society where one group destroys another, just as one race murders and destroys another. Daly argus the catholic church commits genocide when it forces women to have unwanted children because of rape, because of its anti-abortion teaching. it promotes genocide in its support of war and the killing of innocent citizens.
war: war symbolises the worst of apollonian values which have been praised by the church. the process of un-veiling shows just how inconsistent moral theologians are when they defend war and condemn compassionate killing like abortion and euthanasia.
Daly - Transvaluation
Transvaluation
Frederich Nietzsche’s concern that delivering humans from their self-imposed cultural imprisonment requires transvaluation – a complete re-evaluation of all existing values
Daly uses the following of Nietzsche’s ideas:
two aspects of human nature: the two conflicting sides are the apollonian/passive self and the dionysian/energetic and creative self. daly thinks only women can be Dionysian, we have creative capabilities men do not.
the apollonian veil: this is created when humans falsely create ideas that they believe which alienate them from their naturally creative selves. Daly argues only women have the ability to remove these false ideas.
becoming and be-ing: being human is a creative and on-going process, without a perfect end point. daly argues only women understand this creative process of be-ing, which is the spiritual process of living which daly uses to replace an objective god.
Daly - sisterhood
The Sisterhood of Feminism can take its place and fulfil many of the traditional spiritual functions of religion without being patriarchal.
- Sisterhood is women liberating themselves from their divisions into e.g. protestant women and catholic women and realising their unity as a ‘sexual caste’
- Sisterhood is the ‘anti-church’ with no hierarchy or dogmas. Women need a sacred space to escape from patriarchy in order to heal.
Daly argued that women’s abilities and knowledge are actually superior to those of men. Women should therefore have power over men as society would be more peaceful and better for the environment.
friendship and lesbianism
on the issue of sexuality, daly argues that true friendship can only be lesbian. she is deeply critical of male imitating forms of lesbianism (butch women). for daly the notion of heterosexuality is an example of a patriarchal ideas which the church developed because it has such a clear difference between genders.
spinning: a new spirituality
daly is certain that radical feminism will triumph and overcome all the last vestiges of post-christianity society and create what she calls the ‘cosmic tapestry’ making up the holy whole trinity of justice, power and love.
Daly - Quintessence
female spirituality was superior because men were stuck in patriarchy
Will be someday be ended, and then true equality could be achieved
Look sat powerful relationship women share
Quintessence- the feminine spirituality to love and create
Highest essence and spirit that permeated across all things
Blocked by male violence/pornography
Must move away from the maleness of god towards the sprit of quintessence
Gyn/ecology 1978
Ecology Daly argued that ‘Patriarchy perpetuates its deception through myth.’ She thought that the Christian myth was particularly dangerous to women
the Trinity (‘the closed system of eyeball-to-eyeball self-congratulatory communion among the fathers and sons’), the virgin birth (‘Total Rape Victim’), Eucharist/communion (‘cannibalistic/necrophagous ritual’), the incarnate Jesus (‘a unisex model, whose sex is male’)
Of Mary - the female was transformed into little more than a hollow eggshell, a void waiting to be made by the male.’‘The catholic Mary is portrayed as Total Rape Victim’
Daly outlined the patriarchal oppression of women in various cultures around the world to try to demonstrate that oppression is the universal condition of women and oppression is the natural inclination of men.
Daly wrote about the following examples:
Indian custom of suttee (wives sacrificing their own lives on their husband’s funeral pyre) à Done to show devotion/loyalty.
Child brides à Done to be pure and virginal.
Chinese foot binding à Done to make feet small and desirable.
Female genital mutilation à Done to ensure the women were pure/virgins.
Witch burning à Done out of fear of powerful women.
Women have been indoctrinated by men to see this as acceptable
, Gyn/Ecology ends with a call to women to form a sisterhood and challenge the stereotypes about what it means to be female. She instructs women to refuse self-sacrifice, to seek self-actualisation instead. Women should seek out relationships with other women.
Trible
Thinks we can ‘depatriarchalize’ readings of the Bible (it is possible to remove the overly male interpretations). She argues that the Christian tradition uses the feminine to describe God in the Old Testament more often than is usually thought e.g. in Numbers 11:12, God is portrayed as mother and nurse of her wandering children. Trible argues that God should be understood in female and male terms, rather than just male as this gives a better understanding of God who has female and male qualities.
Challenges the way Genesis 2-3 has been interpreted and argues that the (male) interpreters had something to gain from reading the stories in a certain way.
Fiorenzia
Argues that women living in patriarchal societies can take strength from the depictions of Jesus engaging with women, enabling women to be at important events in his ministry and speaking with them as he speaks to men.
We must ‘adopt a hermeneutics of suspicion.. To reconstruct women’s history that was concealed by male historical conscious’
Agrees with the Ruether the feminine is constructed from patriarchal values
Skocise
Suggests that the doctrine of the Trinity is important because it guards against androcentrism. (tendency to prioritise masculine values over feminine
The doctrine of the Trinity says that Jesus was wholly God but not the whole of God.
- That is, Jesus was God incarnate but God incarnate is more than just Jesus
-. There are parts of God that are not Jesus.
This is similar to Ruether’s argument that Jesus was accidentally male rather than essentially male, a point with which Soskice agrees. Soskice wrote ‘human bodies must be either male or female, but Christ is the Saviour not because he is male but because he is human.’
However, although Soskice thinks that the doctrine of the Trinity does not have to be male-focused, she recognises that it often has been viewed that way historically
Synoptic – link to d’costs views of how the tirinity is central to interfaith dialogoue
Pagels
Looks to Egalitarianism of early christaintiy
Elaine Pagels accepted that mainstream Christianity contains misogynism and patriarchy. She suggested that Early Christianity also contained alternative traditions which were much more egalitarian. These traditions are found reflected in the Gnostic Gospels.
Eg) of tohomas, phillip and mary magdelene
They use male and female language about God.
Some go further and describe God as a dyad containing both masculine and feminine aspects.
Mary Magdalene was an important figure (as a disciple or, possibly, as Jesus’ wife).
Some Gnostic sects had female priests.
-she doesnt argue they are more auhtentic then canonical meterial
-However they are valuable alternative tradition to reform christanity by
‘[The gnostic gospels] unanimously picture Mary as one of Jesus’ most trusted disciples. Some even revere her as his foremost disciple
Gonsotiicsm focuses on genesis 1 over 2
- Augustine’s treatment of the Genesis story, in particular his belief in original sin, was at odds with the ideas that went before. The idea that humans are born with concupiscence undermines free will and (according to Pagels)
Hampson
Believes God must be envisaged to be that which promotes our full humanity. She believes God cannot be gendered; nor anthropomorphically conceived as God is that love and power. Hampson tried to reform Christianity from within. She was a vocal advocate of female ordination but during the 1980s came to regard Christianity as a ‘harmful myth’ and abandoned it.
Hanson’s belief is that Christianity is an inherently historical religion. It is based on the idea that God was revealed at a historical point in time. Consequently, it cannot shed its historic past. However, as it emerged from a patriarchal world it must also be inherently patriarchal. Thus she believes that Christianity is intrinsically and irrevocably patriarchal and cannot be updated or reformed in the way that the reformers would like it to be.
For her, there is ‘not a shred of evidence’ that Jesus was a feminist or had a particular concern for women.
Argues that if Christianity is true, God cannot be thought of as moral or good “given the harm that this myth has done to women
Christ
Coins idea of goddess thealogy
Thea = Greek for goddes
Influences Daly – looks to;
Unity with nature. Goddess figures tend to be associated with motherhood and thus with mother nature. Consequently, goddess thealogy often stresses the importance of ecology and living in harmony with the world.
Related to this is a rejection of dualism which place material things and spiritual things in opposition to each other. In (some) strands of tradional Christian thinking women are associated with the material (bad/less good) side of things and men with the spiritual, rational, (superior) side.
Re-evaluation of the body. Humans are not seen as ‘fallen’ and bodily urges are not seen as bad. Sexuality is something to be celebrated.
Community/inter-relatedness.
De bouviar
Her notion that “one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman” helped destroy the notion that women are born feminine by asserting that ‘femininity’ is only a product of society that causes women to become subject to men. Beauvoir explains how “facts” about women created a myth of the “Eternal Feminine” which depicts women as essentially passive and nurturing. This myth is full of double standards that makes it impossible for women to fulfil society’s expectations. For example, Beauvoir points out the contradictory stereotypes of women as mothers/
Norwich
Spoke of Jesus as mother and God the Father as mother. She did not reject the male language applied to the Trinity but supplemented it with female language.
Chan
Argues that the relational concept of God (God as God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit) is not simply God is a male idea but has a dynamic element of multiple persons in a relationship. He believes that using male language for God does not create masculine qualities for God e.g. Isaiah 54:5-7 God acts with ‘deep compassion’ which is not a traditional masculine characteristic. He believes God is a heavenly father for all. The Christian God is in relationship with all human beings, male and female. For him, describing God as father reinforces idea that God and his creation are separate in contrast with earlier ideas of God as mother connected with earth. Therefore, he argues that you cannot rewrite the Christian story to give more prominence to women because it is the story itself that shapes Christian identity. Belief in the concept of the Trinity (of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit) is central to Christianity.
He argues that evidence of a more matriarchal past has never guaranteed a lack of sexism: “Even today, many societies devoted to goddess worship remain oppressive towards women. Devotion to the goddess Kali in Hinduism, for instance, has never resulted in better treatment of women, even among Kali devotees.”
-must mainatin gods transciense / omnipostence
Catechism - ‘god is not made in man’s image; he is neither male nor female’
Lorde
Criticised Daly for refusing to acknowledge the ‘HERSTORY and myth’ of women of colour. She argues that the severe oppression they have suffered greatly outweighs the discrimination of white women. Therefore she believed there was a racial bias to Daly’s work and a racist indifference to the plight of minorities who suffer greatest oppression.
-overly focused on stuggle of white middle class women
-fails to see spiritually struggle of men and women from different class/racial backgrounds.
Riceour
Asks us to adopt a hermeneutic of suspicion when reading a text such as the Bible. We need to be suspicious of the motives, the values, the culture of those who wrote it, and not just project our own values onto the text.
