Gender and theology

• ‘Wives submit yourselves to your husbands as you do to the Lord’ Ephesians 5
• handmaids: Genesis 30 - ‘so she gave him her servant Bilhah as a wife. Jacob slept with her .’
• Daphne Hampson: ‘Feminism represents a revolution.. it is a different view of the world’
• ‘We adopt a hermeneutics of suspicion, use a hermeneutics of remembrance- to reconstruct women’s history in scripture that was concealed by male historical consciousness.’
• Riceour- use a hermeneutic of suspicion when reading texts like the Bible, we need to be suspicious of motives, values and the culture in which it was written, we need to remember that there is a world behind the texts, you cannot just understand you need to go deeper
• Christianity is wrong and needs to be abolished in favour of something better- it is intrinsically sexist and needs to be discarded, along with the sexist practices and beliefs associated with it. Post—Christian theology MARY DALY
• Christianity is mistaken but can be saved - it needs reform and cleansing of patriarchal element to reach a truer version of Christianity- Reform feminist theology, ROSEMARY RADFORD RUETHER
• 'If God is male then male is God' Mary Daly
• MD- language about God is male dominated, male pronouns (He, him, his), male imagery (king, trinity, father, son), making God male also means we assume men to be superior to women- this results in violence and the oppression of women, if the incarnation can only be male this has severe implications for women
• Augustine said women were not created in the image of God (only man is). Aquinas said women were a misbegotten (badly planned, wrong) version of men.
• The unholy trinity of rape, war and genocide: rape culture is when attitudes and in society normalize sexual violence, this acts as a gateway to more extreme acts such as assault and rape
• MD: a male dominated society promotes a phallic (penis- centred) morality where values such as competition, rivalry, aggression are celebrated amongst men, women are encourages to be meek, sacrificial and obedient
• MD: reclaiming language- focus on future spirituality will focus on the most holy trinity of power, justice and love. Used the example of a spinster which is now used to refer to an unmarried women but in fact describes women working together to spin, this is now free from Christian patriarchy
• Simon Chan- the idea of God as 'father' doesn't exclude feminine qualities, instead it excludes an impersonal deity, Trinity (God isn't just male he has dynamic elements of multipole persons in a relationship), fatherhood ( heavenly father for all the concept itself isn't problematic), male language ( doesn't limit God to just male qualities Isaiah 54:5 describes God as a husband with deep compassion)
• Fiorenza: Daly is too narrow in her reading of the Bible, Jesus breaks sexist customs and therefore supports women's struggles against patriarchal biblical sexism. Jesus anointed at Bethany Mark 26:6 'wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.”
• Psalms 145:8 'The lord is gracious and compassionate'
• Audre Lorde – Daly is too narrow in the types of women she considers/includes

  “Let me tell you first about what it was like being a Black woman poet in the ‘60s, from jump. It meant being invisible. It meant being really invisible. It meant being doubly invisible as a Black feminist woman and it meant being triply invisible as a Black lesbian feminist” 
• ’The dignity of women’ Pope john Paul 11- men and women are separate genders by God and he did this on purpose, women can bear children which men cannot do and men can represent Jesus which women cannot do
• MD: spirituality and nature— women are unable to find spiritual fulfilment in Church and they are built and managed by men, she said we should worship Quintessence-the most supreme essence of nature, can be blocked by male dominance and by poverty but can be rediscovered through nature. Quintessence reflects Paganism and witchcraft to connect women with nature
• RRR: argues patriarchy has a profound effect on Christianity but believes the Church needs to be reformed, an eco-feminist who was in favour of women in the Catholic Priesthood, the Church needs to rethink its view on abortion, patriarchy has distorted the Christian message
• RRR: Davidic Messiah (the idea of a military king like King David who would lead his people to victory and restore power to Israel), the messiah is chosen by God and is the son of God as such ‘the messiah can only be imagined as male’ - however Jesus rejected this stereotype. Servant king (serving rather than dominating, seeking out the poor and oppressed- called God Abba suggests someone familiar)
• RRR: Sophia is the principle of wisdom personified as female, biblical ideas have emerged from Greek culture, makes links between the idea of Jesus as the word of God and Sophia, Proverbs 4:6, ‘Do not forsake wisdom and she will protect you, love her and she will watch over you’ The idea of Sophia just turned into Logos ‘In the beginnng was the word(Logos)’ john 1:1
• RRR: responded to Aquinas and Augustine who argued that the incarnation had to be male by arguing that due to the historical context a male incarnation would be more suitable, not because it more accurately presents God. Refers to God as ‘Gaia’ as its the name of the Ancient Greek Godess of the earth and therefore links divinity with the world- this restores the ancient notion of Sophia