I suggest that it is beneficial for Christian feminist theologians to affirm divine personhood on the basis of the revelation of God in the person of Jesus Christ. Doing so allows feminist theologians to connect the doctrines of God and Christ within systematic theologies. Moreover, by affirming divine personhood in concert with an extension of Friedrich Schleiermacher’s transcendental reasoning about redemption, feminists could contribute to the disruption of sexist ecclesial belief and practice. I examine Schleiermacher’s account and rejection of Nazareanism, (...) Manicheanism, Pelagianism, and Docetism, inferring from them four marks of personhood as conditions for the possibility of redemption. These include the communicability of difference, material activity, differentiated relationality, and discerning attention with circumscribed ineffability. In this way, I link feminist anthropologies with Christologically regulated soteriological claims vis-à-vis the doctrine of God. (shrink)

This paper explores the relationship between the problem of evil and a kenotic view of the Atonement evidenced not just by feminist theologians, but by analytic philosophers of religion. I will argue that, although kenosis provides an interesting story about the ability of Christ to partake in human suffering, it faces debilitating problems for understanding divine concurrence with evil in the world. Most significantly, I will argue that the potential tensions between divine justice and divine love can be loosened by (...) looking at ‘redemptive accounts’ of theodicy in the scholarship of women writing in the early modern period in philosophy, particularly Mary Hays , and Catharine Macaulay . Their work collectively confirms the problem of concrete evil and yet offers a unique theodicy grounded in the saving power of the Atonement and restorative power of Christian service. Their arguments are all the more compelling for having been written in response to egregious civil rights abuses and rampant domestic violence of their day. If the Atonement is the divinely-ordained method for gaining insight into the redemptive power of divine grace, then rather than speculating about the metaphysical nature of the divine, this paper will question how we can understand divine perfection in light of evil in the world, especially if the Atonement of Christ involves kenosis. (shrink)

In this article, Rosemary Ruether details the development of the Roman Catholic Women’s ordination movement in the US and the emergence of the Women-church Movement as a critique of the drive to ordain women and recreate the clerical caste system. She then outlines the emergence of the Roman Catholic Womenpriests Movement which decided to find bishops and proceed with women’s ordination. She explores the disagreements between these two movements and a way to resolve this by accepting different contexts for the (...) two movements. (shrink)

This paper seeks to reconsider the value and meaning of eschatology in light of and with the hope of contributing to feminist theological discussions. More specifically, it pays heed to the work that feminist theologians have done to expose the patriarchal heart of many traditional Christian eschatological imaginings. Alongside this, it also charts an appreciation of alternative ideas offered by feminist theologians: primarily that of a sympathetic God who exercises power-in-relationship with creation in the here and now. However, in an (...) attempt to both synthesize and add to these two theological fields, I suggest that eschatology can embrace both the sympathetic God-with-creation, and the finally redemptive God-for-creation. Ultimately, this means that feminist theology does need the future, and a particularly eschatological future, in order that the God of relationality is able, and enables creation, to experience relationality in full. (shrink)