A Crucial Question
The theme here, and in a way of the
whole book, is a phrase that Elizabeth repeats several times in this chapter,
namely, “The symbol of God functions.”
She introduces the phrase early on:
What is the right way
to speak about God? This is a question
of unsurpassed importance, for speech to and about the mystery that surrounds
human lives and the universe itself is a key activity of a community of faith. In that speech the symbol of God functions as
the primary symbol of the whole religious system, the ultimate point of
reference for understanding experience, life, and the world. Hence the way in which a faith community
shapes language about God implicitly represents what it takes to be the highest
good, the profoundest truth, the most appealing beauty. 3-4
How a religious community speaks of
God forms its identity and “directs its praxis.” 4 Praxis means practice, what a community does
on the basis of its faith as opposed to what the community thinks. Elizabeth uses the word a lot. When you see it, just think practice.[1] The God symbol functions in the same way
for individuals as it does for communities:
The symbol of God functions. Neither abstract in content nor neutral in
its effect, speaking about God sums up, unifies, and expresses a faith
community’s sense of ultimate mystery, the world view and expectation of order
devolving from them, and the concomitant orientation of human life and
devotion. 4
In our time women are bringing new
life to the issue of language about God:
The women’s movement in civil society
and the church has spread a bright light on the pervasive exclusion of women
from the realm of public symbol making [i.e.,
the formation of our language for God], and women’s consequent strongly
enforced subordination to the imagination and needs of a world designed chiefly by men. 4
This exclusion has been “stunningly
effective in speech about God.” 4
While officially it is rightly and
consistently said that God is spirit and so beyond identification with either
male or female sex, yet the daily language of preaching, worship, catechesis,
and instruction conveys a different message:
God is male, or at least more like a man than a woman, or at least more
fittingly addressed as male than female.
4-5
The symbol of God functions, and exclusively male language
about God “serves in manifold ways to support an imaginative or structural
world that excludes or subordinates women.
Wittingly or not, it undermines women’s human dignity as equally created
in the image of God.” 5
Women are starting to change all
that. “Feminist theologians, engaging in
the traditional theological task of reflecting on God and all things in the
light of God, are shaping new speech about God….” 5
Today women are “naming toward God” from their experience of sexism.
The “presenting issue” in the
discussion of what we call “inclusive language” for God is, ostensibly at
least, “whether the reality of women can provide suitable metaphor for speech
about God.” 5 There is, however, a lot at stake, because
“the symbol of God functions.”
Language about God in female images not
only challenges the literal mindedness that has clung to male images in
inherited God-talk; it not only questions [men’s] dominance in discourse about
holy mystery. But insofar as ‘the symbol
gives rise to thought,’ such speech calls into question prevailing structures
of patriarchy.
Introducing this mode of speech [i.e.,
female images for God] signals a shift, among those who use it, in their sense
of the divine, a shift in total world views, in the highest ideals and values,
in personal and corporate identity.
What is the right way to speak about
God in the face of women’s newly cherished human dignity and equality? This is a crucial theological question. What is at stake is the truth about God. 5-6
There
are lots of things to say about these introductory statements. The question she is posing is not “Who is
God” but how are we to speak about God.
She will stress throughout the book that God always remains ultimate
mystery, and here she calls God “the mystery that surrounds human life and the
universe itself.” God is the
all-pervasive mystery, and the word God is our primary symbol for that mystery. If that sounds familiar to you from my book,
thank you for paying attention. A
religion (or a religious system) is a system of symbols, and God is the primary
symbol of the religious system.
How
we speak about that chief symbol of the religion matters, and it matters a
great deal. Basically, the language we
use about God reflects our deepest values, and we tend to act on the basis of
the values that we express in our language about God. Elizabeth makes this point right up front, I
think, because she is aware of the wide-spread notion that our language about
God doesn’t matter very much.
Specifically, many people, including many women, say they aren’t
offended by the Christian tradition’s exclusively male language about God
because they understand that God transcends gender, so they don’t feel excluded
by the male language. Elizabeth is
saying here that she disagrees with that understanding. She doesn’t really go into the matter, but I
am sure that she would agree that part of the problem is that symbols and
symbolic language work in the human psyche at the unconscious level, so that
they can have effects on our thinking and our behavior that we aren’t even
aware of. When she says again and again
that “the symbol of God functions” she means that it functions at that
unconscious level, at levels we are not consciously aware of. Exclusively male language for God has
consequences even if we don’t always see the connection between the language
and the consequences. Liberating both
men and women from patriarchy, androcentrism, and misogyny requires liberating
our God language from them first.[2] That liberation has begun in the women’s
movements in society and in the church, even in Elizabeth’s Roman Catholic
Church.
Throughout
the book Elizabeth will say that exclusively male language about God is the
product of a sexist culture and that it functions to perpetuate and legitimize
that sexism. You of course don’t have
agree, but please understand that I agree completely. I hope you will give her thesis that the God
symbol functions, that how we speak of God really matters, a fair hearing with
an open mind.
Context: Mystery Mediated in
History
“The unfathomable mystery of God is
always mediated through shifting historical discourse.” Elizabeth
means here that our human language about God isn’t fixed, isn’t eternal. It is always determined by and reflects the
historical circumstances of the people doing the speaking.
Language about God has a history….There
has been no timeless speech about God in Jewish or Christian tradition. Rather, words about God are cultural
creatures, entwined with the mores and adventures of the faith community that
uses them. As cultures shift, so too
does the specificity of God-talk. 6
She gives as an example Thomas
Aquinas talking about whether it is proper to refer to God as person. He says that it is permissible to do so even
though the Bible doesn’t call God a person.
I think that Elizabeth is here
citing Aquinas, the thirteenth century giant of Scholasticism who is still
today a towering figure in Catholic theology, to give herself cover for
deviating from traditional Catholic language about God. If Aquinas says it’s OK, Josef Ratzinger, who
was the head of the office formerly called the Inquisition when Elizabeth wrote
this book and who is now Pope Benedict XVI, will be hard pressed to call her to
task for it, as much as he would no doubt like to do so. Elizabeth then makes the point herself:
It is not necessary to restrict speech
about God to the exact names that Scripture uses nor to terms coined by the later
tradition. So long as the words signify
something that does characterize the living God mediated through Scripture,
tradition, and present faith experience, for example, divine liberating action
of self-involving love for the world, then new language can be used with
confidence. 7
Elizabeth’s main point
here is this: Human language about God
can not be frozen into old, traditional terms, even if those terms come from
the Bible or the later Christian tradition.
New language about God must not contradict the knowledge about God that
we have from Scripture and the Christian tradition, but it may, and indeed it
must, also reflect “present faith experience,” that is, the present experience
of God of contemporary people, especially of people like women who have been
excluded from the process of God language formation in Biblical and
post-Biblical times.
Sexism, and the urgency of
confronting it, make it “imperative to find more adequate ways of expressing
the ancient good news that faith is to proclaim.”
Elizabeth then writes a difficult
but important sentence: “The present
ferment about naming, imagining, and conceptualizing God from perspectives of
women’s experiences repristinates the truth that the idea of God, incomprehensible
mystery, implies an open-ended history of understanding that is not yet
finished.” 7 Don’t
worry about that obscure word “repristinates.”
I think it means makes fresh and new again—makes pristine again.
The point is that the search of women for new names and images for God reflects
and is grounded in the fact that our language about God, who is ultimately
beyond all language, is not fixed and eternal.
It is therefore legitimate and permissible to change it. It is even necessary to change it.
Then Elizabeth makes some of these
assumptions clear in a way very similar to what I do in my book. In her
letter to me about my book she particularly praised my discussion of Tillich’s
theory of symbols. Reading She Who
Is again, I can see why that part of my
book would particularly have appealed to her.
The historical
open-endedness of talk about God is due not only to its location in time,
place, and culture, which is the case with all human speech, but to the very
nature of what we are talking about. The
reality of God is mystery beyond all imagining.
So transcendent, so immanent is the holy mystery of God that we can
never wrap our minds completely around this mystery and exhaust divine reality
in words and concepts. 7
The ultimate incomprehensibility of God makes attempts to find
new, better language desirable. “It is a
matter of the livingness of God. Given
the inexhaustible mystery inherent in what the word God points to, historically
new attempts at articulation are to be expected and even welcomed.” 7
Note
her phrase “what the word God points to.”
It is an important concept. “God”
is not a thing. “God” is not the name of
some being, not even a Supreme Being. All
language about God points beyond itself
to that which it cannot capture, cannot define.
That is true even of the word God.
The technical way of saying this is that “God” is a symbol, as Elizabeth
does in her phrase “the symbol of God functions.”
Purpose: Connecting Feminist and
Classical Wisdom
Elizabeth here says, basically,
that her purpose in writing is the liberation of both women and men: “My aim in what follows is to speak a good
word about the mystery of God recognizable within the contours of Christian
faith that will serve the emancipatory praxis of women and men to the benefit
of all creation….” 8 To do that she will draw on both feminist
theology and more traditional Christian language.
Note
that Elizabeth makes the decision intentionally and consciously to work within
the Christian faith tradition. Not all
feminist theologians who begin from a Christian position do. Mary Daly, to whom Elizabeth occasionally
refers, is famous for having reached the conclusion that a male person cannot
act as Savior for women, and so she rejected Christianity altogether. Elizabeth makes a different decision so that
she finds value in at least some parts of traditional Christian theology. She says here that she will use some of that
traditional Christian language in what follows.
Then comes a significant definition
of feminist theology:
By Christian feminist
theology I mean reflection on God and all things in the light of God that
stands consciously in the company of all the world’s women, explicitly prizing
their genuine humanity, while uncovering and criticizing its persistent
violation in sexism, itself an omnipresent paradigm of unjust relations. 8
There
are then three elements to “feminist theology.”
1. It is theology on the same
conceptual level as any other theology, a point Elizabeth makes when she
repeats here a definition of theology she has already used, that it is
“reflection on God and all things in the light of God.” 2. It
is done from the perspectives on life of women.
3. It is not neutral. It makes at least three a priori assumptions
that form the basis of everything that follows:
a. Women are human beings equal
to men and having an inherent human dignity equal to that of men. b.
That equal humanity of women is everywhere denied by a prevalent
sexism. c. That denial is unjust and must be
countered. Elizabeth doesn’t quite say
so here, but she told me in one of my conversations with her at Seattle
University in the summer of 1998 that only women can do feminist theology. Men can be allies of feminist theologians,
but they cannot be feminist theologians because they cannot write from the
perspective of a woman.
She continues, saying that feminist
theology
claims the fullness of the [Christian]
religious heritage for women precisely as human in their own right and
independent from personal identification with men. Women are equally created in the image and
likeness of God, equally redeemed by Christ, equally sanctified by the Holy
Spirit; women are equally involved in the on-going tragedy of sin and the
mystery of grace, equally called to mission in the world, equally destined for
life with God in glory. 8
Some
people, including some women, consider this strong, explicit emphasis on the
equality of women to be unnecessary.
They say they’ve always assumed women’s equality and don’t need to have
it preached to them. Remember, however,
one of the basic assumptions of feminist theology, that pervasive sexism in
human cultures denies that equality. The
feminist assumption, and mine as a feminist ally, is that the radical equality
of women has been so consistently and radically denied for so long that that
equality cannot now be over-emphasized or articulated too frequently or too
strongly. It certainly cannot simply be
assumed.
“Feminist theology explicitly
recognizes that the contradiction between this theological identity of women
and the historical condition of women in theory and practice is glaring.” 9
Sexism, she says, which is the denial of women’s radical equality, is
“sinful,” is “contrary to God’s intent, and “is a precise and pervasive
breaking of the basic commandment ‘thou shalt love they neighbor as
thyself’.” 9 Sexism “affronts God by defacing the beloved
creature created in the image of God.”
Church and society must both repent, must turn around from this
sin. 9
Therefore, “feminist theology
advocates the reform of patriarchal civil and ecclesial [church] structures and
the intellectual systems that support them in order to release all human beings
for more just designs of living….”
Feminist theology therefore is done not just for women but for all
people “who care for justice and truth….”
9
Having discussed what she means by
feminist theology, Elizabeth turns to what she means by “classical theology,”
she having labeled this section “Connecting Feminist and Classical
Wisdom.” Classical theology, with which
she aims to connect feminist wisdom, is “the body of thought that arose in the
early Christian centuries in partnership with the Greek philosophical tradition
and continued through the medieval period, molding the discourse of the
churches at the beginning of the modern era.”
9 It shaped our language about
God, including the language of Trinity.
This tradition, she says, is
“profoundly ambiguous” in what it has meant for women. It has “aided and abetted the exclusion and
subordination of women, but also sustained generations of foremothers and
foresisters in the faith.” 9 She says that she is willing to “give
classical theology a hearing,” to listen for what it might have to say that may
yet be of value. And she believes that
classical theology does indeed have things of value to offer.
Yet the project is complex both
because God is ultimately incomprehensible and because the experiences of women
are so diverse and manifold. There are
different feminist perspectives arising all over the world. 10 Elizabeth
acknowledges that her own perspective “is inevitably shaped by my social
location as a white, middle-class, educated and hence privileged citizen of a
wealthy North American country.” It is
also shaped by the fact that she is Catholic as well as by her wide travels
around the world teaching and lecturing.
She describes her own stance as “within the liberation stream of
Catholic Christian feminist theology.”
11
Perhaps
a comment about an important aspect of contemporary modern or post-modern theology
is in order here. There is general
agreement among contemporary theologians (at least among those who are working
outside the Fundamentalist or other literalist traditions that consider the
“Word of God” to be absolute, absolutely clear, and absolutely the same for
everybody, giving no regard to the differences in social location that
enlightened theologians know are so important) that everybody does theology,
and everybody has always done theology, from a particular “Sitz im Leben,” a certain location in life, a certain
cultural social, political, and economic context that shapes their view of God
and of theology. All theology is and
always has been “contextual,” the term usually used for this understanding of theology. Elizabeth is well aware of and fully agrees
with the insight that all theology is contextual. That’s why she takes pains here in the
Introduction to specify her own context.
Returning to the liberation aspect
of feminist theology she says that for her “the goal of feminist religious discourse
pivots in its fullness around the flourishing of poor women of color in violent
situation.” 11 This
liberating aspect of feminism especially for the poor and the victims of
violence is central to Elizabeth’s theology.
She writes from a different perspective, as she acknowledges; but she
writes as an ally of those oppressed women of color about whom she so
passionately cares.
Liberating women liberates all of
society “because women…are the lowest ebb, marginalized, yet sustaining every
society.” 11 Elizabeth speaks powerfully of justice
here: “Only when the poorest, black,
raped, and brutalized women in a South African township—the epitome of victims
of sexism, racism, and classism, and at the same time startling examples of
women’s resilience, courage, love and dignity—when such women with their
dependent children and their sisters around the world may live peacefully in
the enjoyment of their human dignity, only then will feminist theology arrive
at its goal.” 11 It
sounds like Elizabeth has experienced oppression in South Africa much as Walter
Wink has, although she doesn’t specifically say that she has.
Plan
Here she gives a brief outline of
the “plan” of the book. Part I “provides
context and background for the speech about God which follows.” Part II “gathers assets from women’s
articulated experiences, from Scripture, and from classical theology, which can
serve as resources for an emancipatory pattern of speech about God.” Part III “explores a theology of God” that
begins with God’s renewing presence in the world and then considers speech
about each “Person” of the Trinity. This
section tests “the capacity of female images to bear and disclose” the actions
of God in the world. Part IV traces
female symbols “as they give rise to thought.”
13 I guess we’ll have to wait until Part IV to discover what “as they give
rise to thought” means.
In the end this
exploration points toward God with the coinage SHE WHO IS, a divine title
signifying the creative, relational power of being who enlivens, suffers with,
sustains, and enfolds the universe. SHE
WHO IS points to holy mystery beyond all imagining who creates women as well as
men to be imago Dei [the image of
God], the grammar of God’s self-utterance and participants in her liberating
care for this conflictual world and all its creatures. 13
If I am not mistaken,
the phrase in this quote “her liberating care” is the first time Elizabeth has
actually used a feminine pronoun for God in this book.
Scotosis [Hardening of the Mind] v. the Glory of God
People who feel threatened by
feminist theology [and remember that
because Elizabeth is Catholic this probably refers to, among others, the
entirely male Catholic hierarchy, which is engaged today in a passionate
defense of its exclusive hold on power] often try to diminish its
importance. They display a “hardening of
the mind,” or “scotosis.” Scotosis, or
hardening of the mind, results when new questions are suppressed in order to
prevent the emergence of unwanted insight.
14 In the late 1990s, John Paul II, who was Pope when this book was
written, no doubt working in conjunction with Cardinal Ratzinger, who is Pope
today, declared that anyone who even speaks of the ordination of women in the
Roman Catholic Church distances herself from the fellowship of the church. This pronouncement didn’t quite make even
talking about ordination of women an offense that would result in
excommunication, but it came close. My
experience at Seattle University was that the Pope’s statement didn’t stop
anyone from talking about ordaining women in the Roman Catholic church. It is however an indication of how afraid the
male Catholic hierarchy is of the women’s movement within the Church. Scotosis happens both to individuals and
to whole communities. Group interest
tends to limit intelligence.
Marginalizing feminist theology is an example of this phenomenon. 14
The inquiry here, on the contrary,
is grounded in a famous saying of Irenaeus of Lyons: “Gloria
Dei vivens homo”, “the glory of God is the human being fully alive.” Irenaeus
is one of the famous “fathers” of the Christian church in the West. He was Bishop of Lyons in France in the late
second century CE and is famous for his writings against so-called
heretics. Much of what we know about the
Gnostics comes from his writings against them.
Elizabeth is again citing a source that is above reproach in the Catholic
tradition for a position that she knows is not popular with the Catholic powers
that be. Diminishing human beings, any human beings, diminishes God. Bringing humans fully alive enhances
God. 14
People twist the truth about God to justify oppression. Yet we can press Irenaeus’ maxim to its
logically necessary conclusion: Gloria Dei vivens mulier, the glory of
God is woman, women, all women fully alive.
15
The feminist theological enterprise
matters: “The intellectual vitality of
the feminist theological agenda is matched and even outpaced by its existential
importance.” 15 What is at stake is the liberation of both
women and men “and indeed the very viability of the Christian tradition for
present and coming generations.” 15 This
line makes me think that I should have written a chapter on Christian sexism as
another obstacle to faith in my book.
Religions die when their God cannot
keep up with human reality. “If the idea
of God does not keep pace with developing reality, the power of experience
pulls people on and the god dies, fading from memory.” 15
This
powerfully true insight is vitally important not only for feminist
theology. The dominant version of
Christianity among us denies it. It says
that God gave a final and absolute revelation of Himself, always Himself, in the Bible and that our task is
simply to conform our beliefs and our view of the world to that
revelation. That insistence, more than
any other theological or social position, is why Fundamentalism is a threat to
the very survival of Christianity. Our
faith has survived for two thousand years and has been the source of meaning
for countless people in vastly different historical and cultural circumstances
precisely because it can be adapted to speak truth in all of those circumstances. The Christian faith lives today precisely
because it is alive. Fundamentalism
freezes the life out of it.
Fundamentalism makes the faith static, rigid, unyielding, and
stagnant. Such a faith simply cannot
long endure. History will pass it by,
rendering it a relic, of interest only to historians, if even to them. Our task in “liberating Christianity” is
nothing less than to rescue our great faith from the inevitable death that
faces it if the forces of Fundamentalism, the forces of stagnation and
rigidity, cannot be overcome.
[1]
In these notes I will put my comments in italics so you can tell when I’m
saying something from when I’m reporting what Elizabeth says. Occasionally italics may represent something
else, as when foreign words are italicized or a word or phrase is in italics
for emphasis. Generally, however, the passages
in italics are my comments and explanations rather than something Elizabeth
herself has written.
[2]
Feminist critique usually breaks sexism down into three component parts. Patriarchy refers to the male-dominated
structure of society and the family.
Androcentrism means and refers to the “male-centeredness” of patriarchal
cultures and their values. “Misogyny”
means and refers to the devaluation and diminution of women as human beings and
as equal members of the society.
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