Feminist Theology Final Exam
Be prepared to answer all of the following
1. Incarnation and Christology : In the Confession of Chalcedon (433AD) Christ is pronounced perfect God and perfect man; consubstantial with the Father in his Godhead and with us in his manhood. Augustine argued that Jesus was necessarily male.
Rosemary Radford Reuther responds to this: we need an ability to accept his particularity [that is, Jesus' particularity as a man], without confusing one aspect of that particularity, his maleness, with the essence of Christ as God's word incarnate. Letty Russell claims that in her view of christology, the maleness of Jesus is totally irrelevant. She writes, 'To think of Christ first in terms of his male sex or his racial origin is to revert again to a biological determinism which affirms that the most important thing about a person is her or his sex or color.... Jesus is first and foremost a new sort of person. As the Christ he is the representative of the new redeemed humanity before God and is also God's representative of the humanity of God.' Feminist Theologians have entered, it seems, whole heartedly into the Quest for the Historical Jesus. Daphne Hampson responds: Any adequate Christology would have to be such a low Christology [cf. Carter Heyward: 'Jesus matters only if he was fully, and only, human .... A person who knew and loved God.'] that it could not rightly be called Christian.
With whom of the above do you agree and on what basis? What alternatives to our incarnation and sacrificial christologies does feminist thought offer? [We have emphasized Christ-Sophia, Mary - Mother of God, and the notion that the incarnation is a infusion of God into the world - World as God's Body] Do these alternative reflect Ruether or Hampson's position?
2. Theology, Language and Image: Mary Daly's method of liberation involves a "castrating" of language and images that reflect and perpetuate the structures of a sexist world. It castrates precisely in a sense of cutting away the "phallocentric value system imposed by patriarchy," in its subtle as well as in its more manifest expressions.
Sallie McFague: In a number of ways .. Feminist theologians have shown why religious language is not meaningful in our time. Language which is not our language, models which have become idols, images which exclude are experience are three common failings of religious language, but they are especially evident to groups of people who feel excluded by the classical tradition of a religious faith.
Take one of the dominate male metaphors for God and use it to explain what Daly and McFague mean. You may wish to choose one that McFague identifies as a root metaphor (instead of a metaphor, you may discuss a cultural icon, the depiction of God on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (plate 42)). Why is this metaphor not necessarily meaningful? How can this language be idolatrous? What are some alternative models for understanding God proposed by feminist theologians. (Can we counter balance this image by using Michelangelo's Pieta (plate 12) as a portrayal of God?) (I have placed a book on reserve that contains the identified plates.) What are the broad implications of the claim that our language is a product of imagination rather than divine inspiration. Be sure to differentiate between Daly and McFague when possible.
3. Theology and Language: God as Mother -- Mother Goddess: Since C.S. Lewis' argument against the ordination of women in "Priestesses in the Church," opponents of feminist theology have argued that calling God mother is tantamount to a return to mother goddess worship. Lewis suggests that ordination of women is to "exchange revelation for that old wraith Natural Religion."
Elizabeth Achtemeier argues: "As soon as God is called female, the images of birth, of suckling, of carrying in the womb, and, most importantly, the identification of the deity with the life in all things becomes inevitable, and the Bible's careful and consistent distinction between Creator and creation is blurred and lost."
Virginia Mollenkott responds that the language of mother does not negate God's transcendence but instead accents the biblical paradox of God's immanence and transcendence. God as mother suggests that God is present or active within without limiting God to creation, as pantheism does.
Many feminist theologians do discuss the metanarrative of the mother goddess. To what do they refer? Is the language of God as mother the same as the worship of a mother-goddess? How can we differentiate the two?
4. Ecclesiology: C.S. Lewis on the admission of women to the priesthood: "I am tempted to say that the proposed arrangement would make us much more rational but not near so much like a Church."
Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza agrees, in a way, both to the argument that women should seek to be priests and that the Church wouldn't be the same if they became priests: " I maintain that women have to demand ordination as bishops first, and only after they have obtained it can they afford to be ordained deacons and priests. Women have to become visible on all levels of the church .. If the church is truly to become a community of equals before God and the world.... Equal ordination is the test case, but the transformation of a celibate priesthood, a hierarchical church, and a male-clerical theology is its unconditional prerequisite and consequence."
Some feminist theologians no longer argue for the ordination of women. Research has demonstrated that women continue to fulfil roles in the church whether they are ordained or not. In the Roman Catholic tradition, lay ministry by women may be transforming the role of the priest.
In order to achieve full equality of men and women within the Church, the moderate Rosemary Radford Ruether and the radical Mary Daly arrive at the conclusion that women should worship separately from men.
Explain the shared presuppositions upon which Lewis and Fiorenza's arguments rest and where they are at odds. How do you respond to the notion of the separation of the sexes?
5. Sin: There is no word in Hebrew that means precisely theological sin. In the New Testament, the Greek word hamartia, literally missing the mark, becomes the theological term for sin, but for the most part sin is described as a state from which humanity needs to be saved.
The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church betrays how theologians have understood sin since the time of Augustine: Sin is the purposeful disobedience of a creature to the known will of God. Reinhold Niebuhr gives this a modern existential twist by saying that sin comes to be, not necessarily but inevitably, in a situation of Angst .... In anxiety, humans are faced with two possibilities -- to trust God or to set oneself in place of God.
Judith Plascow responds to Niebuhr by arguing that neither the understanding of sin as pride and rebellion against God nor that of sin as estrangement reflect women's experience and socialization.
In support of the feminist discussion, Jürgen Moltmann writes that patriarchy drives the male child to learn to contrast himself with God's self-control and self-mastery. And, as a result, he constantly becomes anxious that he is 'nothing' and has to 'make something of himself.'
Discuss the feminist critique of the prevailing notion of sin: How does it reflect a patriarchal bias according to feminists? How does it exclude or subjugate women? What alternative views of the unredeemed human condition do feminist theologians offer?
6. Story and Theology: J. R. R. Tolkein writes, "The Bible creates a world, a "semiotic universe paradigmatically encoded in holy writ, a medium in which we can live and move. It give us our grammar, our language, our discourse , and our framework. The story has become our story by faith and supplies the interpretive framework in which we live and by which we understand what reality is. To be a Christian is to believe this story and to live on the basis of these metaphors. The problem for many people is they put a great deal of stock in the certainty that all of the Bible is historically true including Adam and Eve. This is because their hope rests not on the story of salvation but on the Bible being a book free of legendary elements.
Carol P. Christ concurs that the Bible and stories in general give shape to lives but asserts that "Women's stories have not been told. And without stories there is no articulation of experience."
Throughout this course, stories -- Biblical stories, the story of history, the story of Christian theology, the stories of women like Cady Stanton and Maya Angelou, the story of the goddesses and others -- have been told. Describe the new stories and the retelling of stories that have or could altered the interpretative frame work in which you live and how they do this. How can you articulate the stories that do not fit into your true story (possible examples, the mother goddess narrative or the Lilith story) in relation to the Biblical narrative? Do you simply discount them as false stories or is there a way that they can express meaning without ripping you asunder from the Christian story?
7. Feminist Hermeneutics
Describe the distinctions between a feminist hermeneutic and the hermeneutic provided you by your previous religious education. Be prepared to discuss the different questions, ideologies and presuppositions with which these two hermeneutics approach the following biblical texts. Do not provide a line by line exegesis, but rather describe the different approaches and give examples from the text. You will want to consider the various methodologies that a feminist hermeneutic may employ and argue for the appropriate application of a specific methodology for the interpretation of a specific text.