Gender and theology

what does Teilhard believe?

Intelligence is the interior dimension of human energy

What does Ruether think about God/ess

Religions of the Near East had images of the “mother goddess.” When male gods appear they are equivalent and not complementary images of the divine.

God as @@“primal matrix” and “the great womb”@@ (like Tillich ground of being).

What does Ruether say about the Hebrew scriptures?

* Exodus portraying Yahweh the liberator of oppressed people: there are references to God crying out like a woman in labor
* Wisdom is a subtle representative of the divine presence in the world and instructs men in the mysteries of God’s knowledge 
* the OT prohibited idolatry, we cannot make male image into an absolute

How about the new testament?

* the gospel of Luke uses the experience of both men and women - Building the kingdom is like a farmer sowing seeds and a woman leavening bread
* mary and mother
* In christ, there is neither male nor female (Galatians)
* the immanence of God, not a male God up in the sky, a being removed rom creation, but the source of being that energizes continuing transformation of nature \n and the human community

What does Ruether say about Original Sin?

* dualism is the original sin as represented by the good and evil interpretation of sexual differences
* men representing freedom and rationality and women necessity and emotion.

How does Ruether think men can get involved?

She sees Jungian psychology as the intellectual base for male feminism

Men should be in solidarity with a particular woman or group that is struggling to find their own way (for example, supporting her education by sharing in \n domestic work).

What are sins by omission?

men and women accept patriarchy without challenging it

Ruether’s view on Christology

Christ is in a dynamic relationship with redeemed humanity (vine and branches image). He cannot be “encapsulated one-for-all in the historical Jesus”

Ruether on Church

Acts 2: spirit is given to male and female

In 2002, seven women were ordained by a Catholic bishop on the Danube River; several women were ordained bishops. In 2012 they claim 9 bishops, 81 priests in USA, Canada and Europe. They claimed Apostolic succession and in May 2008 the Vatican excommunicated all these women.

What type of feminism does Ruether believe in?

Integrated feminism

What does Ruether say about the Holy Spirit

it is androgynous (gender-neutral)

What does Sojourner Truth say?

it was jesus who responded to her calls of grief and provided comfort when she saw her children being sold off to slavery

When a clergyman tried to prove that women are inferior by stating that Jesus was male, she responded “where did your christ come from?” From God and a woman

What did Elizabeth Cady Stanton do?

Edit and write the Woman’s Bible

She believed that the political and economic subordination fo women was the result of religious and ideological roots

The interpretation that woman is not an afterthought, but the culmination

the creation of woman, Eve completes humanity, she is the companion and partner. It does not mean that the first creation is perfect, as practice makes perfect.

* It can be argued that men and women are simply interrelated and interdependent of each other.

1 Timothy

* Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent


* and @@whoever does not provide food for relatives, and especially for family members, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever@@.

What does Simone De Beauvoir say?

One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. No biological, psychological or economic fate determines the figure that the human female present in society; It is civilisation as a whole that produces this creature

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Friedman agreed with her that @@the Church's motherhood ideal is sometimes a source of false-consciousness.@@

US report 1994 @@McLanahan and Sandefur@@

children brought up in blended families/same-sex families do less well in education

However, Jessie Bernard argues that it does not matter which type of family it is, but that children could be loved in different types of families

What does Mulieris Dignitatem use as its foundation?

Bible, tradition, Natural law

@@Halkes@@ argues that @@Jesus’ teaching on the Kingdom of God required social and spiritual transformation@@. Women must learn to develop their gift of care into the public sphere, and men must learn the virtue of care and give up the sense of entitlement.

She @@criticises the 'headship' teaching in Mulieris Dignitatem@@ for failing to extend female/male mutuality far enough.

Liberal protestants on covenant

* the biblical covenant which governs gender roles emphasise that gender is not intrinsic in nature because the covenant is a human reflection on what being in a relationship with God entails.

How does Foucault define love?

as pleasure rather than commitment

What does Fiorenza argue?

There were a number of significant women such as Priscilla in Acts, Apphia and Phoebe (a deacon of the church)

It is important to uncover early history of Christianity, the first Christian communities where women played an equally significant role as men)

@@“Women were not marginal in the earliest beginnings of Christianity;@@ rather, biblical texts and historical sources produce marginality of women. @@Hence texts must be interrogated not only as to what they say about women but also how they construct what they say or do not say."@@

What does Mulieris Dignitatem say about motherhood?

* This mutual gift of the person in marriage opens to the gift of a new life, a new human life, a new human being, who is also a person in the likeness of his parents.
* @@Motherhood implies from the beginning a special openness to the new person: and this is precisely the woman's 'part'."@@

Proverbs 31

* the ‘capable wife’ - balanced motherhood and a child (using money to buy the vineyard whilst providing for the family)

Mulieris Dignitatem and use of Genesis 3:!6

* He shall rule over you' (Genesis 3:16) must not under any condition lead to the @@'masculinization' of women in the name of liberation from male 'domination', women, must not appropriate to themselves male characteristics contrary to their feminine 'originality'.@@



* Men are "not so psychologically predisposed to parenthood"

Genesis 3:2

Eve means “the mother of all living”

What does the Catechism say about marriages?

@@It does not tolerate trial marriages@@ - demands total and definitive gift of persons to each other

Lot and his daughters

gang rape