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# 2024-10-27 - Womanguides by Rosemary Radford Ruether
IMG Duel Between A Woman And A Dominican
This book caught my eye in a used book store. It's not my usual cup
of tea, but i found it interesting. I love the subversive nature of
the writing and the scrappy eagerness to tackle the task of creating
an alternative culture, DIY style. The following paragraph sums it
up for me.
> In doing so, we read canonical, patriarchal texts in a new light of
> that larger reality that they hide and deny. In the process, a new
> norm emerges on which to construct a new community, a new theology,
> eventually a new canon. The new norm makes women as subjects the
> center rather than the margin. Women are empowered to define
> themselves rather than to be defined by others. Women's speech and
> presence are normative rather than aberrant.
# Introduction
Feminist theology cannot be done from the existing base of the
Christian Bible. The Old and New Testaments have been shaped in
their formation, their transmission, and, finally, their canonization
to sacralize patriarchy. They may preserve, between the lines,
memories of women's experience. But in their present form and
intention they are designed to erase women's existence as subjects
and to mention women only as objects of male definition. In these
texts the norm for women is absence and silence. When praised for
their compliance or admonished for their "disobedience," women remain
in these texts "the other." Their own point of view, their own
experience, their own being as human subjects is never at the center.
They appear, if at all, at the margin. Mostly, they do not appear
at all. Even their absence and silence are not noted since, for
women in patriarchy, absence and silence are normative.
Thus the doing of feminist theology demands a new collection of texts
to make women's experience visible. How does one make the right
start in developing such a collection of texts? Does one seek out an
alternative, matriarchal religion and resurrect its canon?
Unfortunately, such a canon cannot be found.
Should we reject all roots in the past and create something totally
de novo? Even if we pretended to do that, we could not. Our stories
would be built in some way on old ones.
Even though there is no canon of an alternative feminist religion of
ancient times, we are not left without sources for our own experience
in the past. We can read between the lines of patriarchal texts and
find fragments of our own experience that were not completely erased.
We can also find, outside of canonized texts, remains of alternative
communities that reflected either the greater awe and fear of female
power denied in later patriarchy, or questionings of male domination
in groups where women did enter into critical dialogue. Whether
anathematized and declared heretical or just overlooked, some of
these texts are recoverable. We can resurrect them, gather them
together, and begin to glimpse the larger story of our experience.
In doing so, we read canonical, patriarchal texts in a new light of
that larger reality that they hide and deny. In the process, a new
norm emerges on which to construct a new community, a new theology,
eventually a new canon. The new norm makes women as subjects the
center rather than the margin. Women are empowered to define
themselves rather than to be defined by others. Women's speech and
presence are normative rather than aberrant.
... We can read these patriarchal texts from the underside and note
their hidden message--namely, the struggle to reverse reality, to
make subjects into objects, to reduce to silence those who sometimes
spoke, to make absent those whose presence was thereby actually
acknowledged.
These texts purposely do not go beyond the border of the Western
Christian culture of its author and, it is presumed, of most of its
readers. ... The purpose is to provide a working collection that
reflects the basic paradigms that have shaped our cultural
consciousness, both what we have chosen to remember and something of
what we have tried to forget but, in some dim way, still remember.
# Chapter 1: Gender Imagery for God/ess
The psalms written in the name of the Lord whose name could not be
named echoed the patterns of psalms once sung to other deities. Thus
in the psalm to Ishtar, which we read from a seventh-century B.C.
Babylonian text, we readily recognize the parallels with Hebrew
psalms.
# Chapter 2: The Divine Pleroma
The Wisdom of Solomon was written by an Alexandrian Jew of the second
century B.C. It reflects both the mythical cultures of Egyptian and
Hellenistic world, which identified Goddesses with Wisdom, and also
philosophical concepts that speak of an immanent power of divine
truth and knowledge that comes forth from the transcendent world to
found and guide the cosmos. The predominant imagery for Wisdom is
drawn from light. Wisdom is like a spiritual effulgence that
radiates from the divine source of light.
She is the image of God for she translates into form the unspoken or
unmanifest latency of transcendent divinity. As agent of creation,
she translates divine potency into act in created beings. As
revealer, she translates the search for God into clear forms of
knowledge and divine precept. She is both the objective and the
subjective side of divine revelation for she not only manifests the
latent power of God but enters into the seeker of truth and goodness
and enables him to find knowledge and virtue.
The final text in this section comes from the nineteenth-century
Shaker Bible, which drew on a comprehensive understanding of the
androgyny of the divine, of the order of creation and the New
Creation. The Shakers took literally the Genesis text that God
created humanity male and female "in their image" to mean that the
Deity is male and female. The plural form of the Genesis text, "let
us make humanity in our image," they understood to be the discourse
between the Father and Mother in Deity. This eternal Mother they
identified with the Wisdom of the Hebrew tradition. It is this
female Wisdom who speaks as the voice of the revelation of God.
## Divine Wisdom as Effulgence of God And Bride of the Wise
Wisdom shines bright and never fades; she is easily discerned by
those who love her, and by those who seek her she is found. She is
quick to make herself known to those who desire knowledge of her; the
man who rises early in search of her will not grow weary in the
quest, for he will find her seated at his door. To set all one's
thoughts on her is prudence in its perfect shape, and to lie wakeful
in her cause is the short way to peace of mind. For she herself
ranges in search of those who are worthy of her; on their daily path
she appears to them with kindly intent, and in all their purposes
meets them half-way. The true beginning of wisdom is the desire to
learn, and a concern for learning means love toward her; the love her
means the keeping of her laws...
# Chapter 3: Stories of Creation
The reference to their possession of the "image of God" here should
not be construed to mean that the priestly author sees this deity as
androgynous. Rather, the concept of "image of God" refers to this
role of the human pair as representative of the sovereignty of God
over the universe.
See Phyllis Bird, "Male and Female, He created Them: Gen. 1:27b in
the Context of the Priestly Account of Creation," Harvard Theological
Review 74, no. 2 (1981): 129-159.
# Chapter 4: Humanity: Male And Female
Although the language of the Second Genesis story is by no means as
misogynist as the later rabbinic and Christian commentaries on it, we
cannot escape the conclusion that the structuring of the story as a
male reversal of birth carries an intention to make the male the
primary human being and then to locate the female as secondary and
auxiliary to him.
Male mythology is succeeded culturally by male "science," but this
male science carries much the same purpose as patriarchal creation
myths, namely, to prove that the subordination and inferiority of
woman is "according to nature."
In his biology, Aristotle describes the reproductive act as a release
of active male formative principle to female materiality. The male
semen provides what we today might call the entire genetic code of
the embryo or its active power of formation. The blood of the female
womb provides the matter shaped by the male active power. But the
female herself is a deformed or imperfect human. And so, although
every male seed strives to fully form the maternal matter and produce
a male, sometimes this fails to be perfected. The resistance of the
female matter fails to "take" the male form perfectly, and so a
defective human, or female, resembling the mother is born.
The influence of this Aristotelian biology on Christian theology,
especially on medieval scholasticism, can hardly be underestimated.
Aristotle's biology gave "scientific expression" to the basic
patriarchal assumption that the male is normative and representative
expression of the human species and the female is not only secondary
and auxiliary to the male but lacks full human status in physical
strength, moral self-control, and mental capacity. This lesser
"nature" thus confirms the female's subjugation to the male as her
"natural" place in the universe.
The ancient Sumerian and Babylonian texts that depict an independent
Goddess also typically describe sexuality in delighted and
pleasurable terms. By contrast, the patriarchal texts in this
chapter give evidence of a male distaste for sexual relations with
women, as though the physical consorting with such a degraded being
comes to be seen as degrading to the male.
This distaste for female sexuality is also expressed in Greek
idealization of homosexuality. Love of men makes one manly (the
opposite of current American assumptions), brave, wise, and strong.
As adults, such men become lovers of youth and thereby also tutor
youth in the ways of manliness.
# Chapter 5: The Origins of Evil
The perception of good and evil is basic to human consciousness. By
this perception the human being sets itself over against existing
reality, names aspects of that reality as contrary to "what ought to
be," and thereby also generates a vision of an ideal world that
becomes the standard by which existing reality is judged as deficient.
A second way of relating the two is to see the ideal world as a
future possibility that is unfolding through a developmental process
or through a conflictual struggle. A third way of relating the two
is to see the ideal world as a heavenly world available only to the
gods (and a privileged aristocracy) but denied to ordinary mortals.
Through cyclical ritual the lower moral world might be fleetingly
blessed by this divine world but would never capture it in a complete
and final form. Ancient Near Eastern religion tended toward this
third, pessimistic form.
Moses shatters the tablets in rage when he sees this apostasy. But
he also placates the rage of God and prevents God from casting off
his people altogether. The sins of Israel are purged by a
bloodletting in which the Levites slay three thousand Israelites.
This act reflects the rivalries of the different priestly
confraternities in the ancient Hebrew temple and was written to
vindicate the Levitical priesthood. Their willingness to pitilessly
slay their own brothers and sons proves their total devotion to God
and wins them divine blessing. ... loyalty to God demands a violent
ethnocentrism that rejects all dialogue with other human cultures and
requires one to be ready to murder one's own relatives if they adopt
foreign practices.
Early Christianity was profoundly divided by radical readings of
Scripture that suggested that the new humanity in Christ delivered
the redeemed from the present world system--politically, culturally,
and religiously. A new spiritual equality of woman was one
implication of this radical reading of Scripture. Paul himself was
divided between radical reading of redemption and a conservative
reading of coexistence with the present world system. But his
followers in the next generation split into two camps. Some,
represented by figures such as Marcian or by the popular Acts of Paul
and Thecla, believed that the baptized transcended patriarchal
restrictions on women.
# Chapter 6: Redeemer/Redemptrix: Male And Female Saviors
Contrary to the parties of Torah righteousness and zealous
nationalism, [Jesus] announced that God's favor had come upon those
who had no chance in the present system of social status and
religious observance--the poor, the unclean, and the unlearned, the
despised underclasses of Palestinian society, including women among
these underclasses.
The way of redemption was the way of love and service to others,
especially to the humiliated of society. [Jesus] used the term
servant in the prophetic sense of a relationship to God that freed
one from servitude to all human masters.
In early Christian martyr texts the martyr who might be a woman slave
can be hailed as "another Christ." Such Christianity could encounter
Christ in "our sister." But imperial Christianity could no longer
encounter Christ in slaves or women.
# Chapter 7: Repentance, Conversion, Transformation
The definition of repentance and conversion is, by nature, relative.
What conversion means is relative to how one has defined what is
wrong with humanity. The goal of conversion will be an ideal
correction of this definition of what is wrong.
Jonah is sent to the great city of Ninevah, capital of the Assyrian
empire, a city that symbolized all manner of evil for traditional
Jews. Jonah is told to tell the inhabitants of Ninevah that unless
they repent of their sins they will be overthrown by God. Jonah
tries to run away from his mission because he doesn't want Ninevah to
be saved. But, after various adventures, he is forced to carry out
his mission. To his great chagrin, all the inhabitants of Ninevah
repent from the highest to the lowest. ... When God sees this
repentance of Ninevah, he repents and spares the city.
The story of the repentance of Ninevah is told as a joke on Jewish
particularists who believed that God wills the salvation only of
Jews. This is why the conversion of Ninevah is told in an amazing
way. The author wants to make the point that God's concern extends
to all peoples. Sin is understood as public and collective. Ninevah
is an evil city because in it reign conditions of all types of
corruption, both injustice and debauchery. There is no division of
private, personal sins (sexual) and public sins (injustice).
Repentance likewise is public and collective.
# Chapter 8: Redemptive Community
The word Eclesia means a citizen assembly, gathered to do the
business of the community. This was the word adopted for the Church
of the New Testament. In the Greek Septuagint this term was also
used for the assembly of Israel. It thus took on the connotation of
a religious assembly gathered before God.
This patriarchal community that excluded women from leadership also
symbolizes itself collectively as female, as a Bride or Wife of God
and Mother of God's People. Why? The bridal-maternal imagery stands
within the basic symbol system of patriarchy. If God is like a great
Patriarch and the assembly of males like his "sons" or "servants,"
then the community collectively can be imaged as like a wife of God
whom God elects. Such symbolism of the covenant of Israel as like a
patriarchal sacred marriage reverses the sacred marriage imagery of
Sumerian, Babylonian, and Canaanite religion. Here the Goddess was
the dominant divine figure, and the bridegroom represented the King,
the representative of human community.
As Woman-Church we repudiate the idol of patriarchy. We repudiate it
in the name of God, in the name of Christ, in the name of Church, in
the name of humanity, in the name of Earth. Our God and Goddess, who
is Mother and Father, friend, lover and helper, did not create this
idol and is not represented by this idol. Our brother Jesus did not
come to this earth to manufacture this idol, and he is not
represented by the idol. The message and mission of Jesus, the child
of Mary, which is to put down the mighty from their thrones and
uplift the lowly, is not served by this idol. Rather, this idol
blasphemes by claiming to speak in the name of Jesus and to carry out
his redemptive mission, while crushing and turning to its opposite
all that he came to teach... The Powers and Principalities of rape,
genocide, and war achieve their greatest daring by claiming to be
Christ, to represent Christ's mission. The Roman Empire clothes
itself in the mantle of the Crucified and sits anew upon its imperial
throne.
As Woman-Church we cry out: horror, blasphemy, deceit, foul deed!
This is not the voice of our God, the face of our redeemer, the
mission of our Church. Our humanity is not, cannot be represented,
but is excluded in this dream, this nightmare of salvation. As
Woman-Church we claim the authentic mission of Christ, the true
mission of Church, the real agenda of our Mother-Father God who comes
to restore and not to destroy our humanity, who comes to ransom the
captives and to reclaim the earth as our Promised Land. We are not
in exile but the Church is in exodus with us. God's Shekinah, Holy
Wisdom, the Mother-face of God has fled from the high thrones of
patriarchy and has gone into exodus with us. She is with us as we
flee from the smoking altars where women's bodies are sacrificed, as
we cover our ears to blot out the inhuman voice that comes forth from
the idol of patriarchy.
As Woman-Church we are not left to starve for the words of wisdom; we
are not left without the bread of life. Ministry too goes with us
into exodus. We learn all over again what it means to minister; not
to lord over, but to minister to and with each other, to teach each
other to speak the words of life...
# Chapter 9: Foremothers of Woman Church
In this chapter we lift up the names of women leaders in Israel and
early Christianity. Rather than to make the story endless, we
restrict the texts to a few classical exemplars for the found periods
of the Jewish and Christian communities. Although these women can be
called by such titles as priest, judge, apostle, martyr, and mystic,
the primary category for women's leadership in the Biblical religion
is prophet(ess).
Prophecy represents the power of freedom and newness of life in which
God's word breaks in to speak in judgment on established modes of
life and to open up new possibilities. It is significant, therefore,
that the power of authentic prophecy was the one ministry never
denied in theory to women...
# Chapter 10: The New Earth: Visions of Redeemed Society And Nature
The hopes for a new age of peace and justice constituted the meaning
of redemption most central to prophetic Judaism.
... the laws recognized that there is a continual drift toward
alienation of society and land. Some get rich and others poor, and
so people lose their land and their freedom. Thus, periodically,
every 50 years (a great Sabbath, i.e., every seven times seven or
forty-nine years), there should be a restoration of society to the
ideal norm. Those who have been enslaved will be released. Those
who have lost their land will be able to redeem it. Land should lie
fallow for a season and animals should be allowed to rest.
[Redemption] is a continuous process that needs to be done over and
over again within history.
It cannot be emphasized too strongly that the anarchist concepts of a
balanced community, a face-to-face democracy, a humanistic
technology, and a decentralized society--these rich libertarian
concepts--are not only desirable, they are also necessary. They
belong not only to the great visions of man's future, they now
constitute the preconditions for human survival.
What is most significant about ecology is its ability to convert this
often nihilistic rejection of the status quo into an emphatic
affirmation of life--indeed, into a reconstructive credo for a
humanistic society.
# Chapter 11: The New Heaven: Personal And Cosmic Eschatology
The religions of ancient Near Eastern culture, Sumerian, Babylonian,
and Hebrew, did not originally hold out hope for human escape from
mortality.
However, in the later stages of the various Mediterranean religions of
antiquity, this trade-off of human mortality for seasonal renewal
became unsatisfactory.
However, as these [this-world] hopes were disappointed by expanding
imperial systems, Hebrew hope became increasingly apocalyptic.
But this introduction of resurrection of the dead of past times broke
the essential historical context of future hope.
Later apocalypses developed this eschatological element, eventually
imagining a historical period (millennium) when the just will reign
within history and then an eternal new heaven and earth when the
cosmos itself will be regenerated and become capable of bearing
immortal life.
# Chapter 12: New Beginnings
Neither revelation nor the telling of stories is closed.
So feminism, too, recognizes that patriarchal texts deform the
liberating spirit for women, rejects a theology confined to
commentary on past texts. We are not only free to reclaim rejected
texts of the past and put them side by side with canonized texts as
expressions of truth, in the light of which canonized texts may be
criticized; but we are also free to generate new stories from our own
experience that may, through community use, become more than personal
or individual. They may become authoritative stories, for it is
precisely through community use in a historical movement of
liberation, which finds in them paradigms of redemptive experience,
that stories become authoritative.
# The Parable of the Naked Lady written by Anne Spurgeon
The young women gathered round him and one of them asked, "Master,
tell us what is the best image of womanhood that we can become? We
feel uncertain about the ways of our mothers." And Jesus said to her,
"Women, what you ask is something I can not decide for you." And he
told them a parable, saying:
A naked woman sat at the crossroads where the road that went north
and south met the road going east and west. People passed her; some
were ashamed, some were angry, but most looked upon her with
disapproval. Some threw clothes at her--all different types, colors
and sizes. The woman knew she was naked, but did not lift a finger to
cover herself.
There was a woman in a golden gown who stopped her journey and went
to the naked woman saying, "Take my dress. See how beautiful it is, a
golden brocade covered with pearls and diamonds." She took off the
garment and handed it to the naked woman who instantly felt its
weight.
"This is very heavy," said the naked woman.
The elaborate woman nodded. "The wearer of that gown must always look
beautiful, must always act charming, must remain still and maintain
beauty for her husband. She must constantly display her husband's
wealth no matter what its cumbrance. She must not lose her figure nor
grow old. She must put up with her husband's temperament, appetites
and decisions."
"I do not want this dress," said the naked woman. "Here, take it
back."
But instead, the elaborate woman threw the dress in a heap by the
side of the road. She sat down next to the naked woman.
There was a woman in a simple gray dress who stopped her journey and
went to the naked woman saying, "Take my dress. See how simple it is;
it takes no special care and is easy to move in." She handed the
dress to the naked woman, who felt that its burden was also great.
"What causes the weight of this dress?" she asked.
"Thankless toil," said the simple woman. "Years of washing,
scrubbing, vacuuming, diapering, cooking, chauffeuring, arguing,
punishing, remembering, organizing and catering. The wearer of that
dress is forever the backbone of her home--she can never tire, get
sick, leave, be alone or cultivate her own interests. She loses her
color and her youth and watches as her man's eye looks elsewhere for
beauty."
"Here, take back your dress," said the naked woman. But the simple
woman put her dress with the golden dress by the side of the road.
She sat down next to the elaborate woman and the two began to argue
about whose garment had been the heaviest. The three women sat at the
crossroads.
There was a woman in a short red dress who stopped her journey and
went to the naked woman. "My dress might suit you. It is easy to get
in and out of and is very soft and alluring. Here." She handed the
dress to the naked woman.
"Don't be deceived," said the sensuous woman. "It too is heavy laden."
"Why?" asked the naked woman.
"The wearer of this dress must bear the burden of frigid wives. She
must always be available for the sexual demands of men. She is the
keeper of lies and deceits, and must endure the hate of women who do
not like what she does, but wish they had her power. The woman who
wears this dress must open her legs to feed herself, to clothe
herself, to house herself, and to care for any misbegotten offspring.
She must always be soft and sensuous, bold and enterprising,
calculating and owned. She lives with the knowledge that she must
always welcome men who never stay."
"This dress will not do either," said the naked woman. "Take it
back." But the sensuous woman tossed the red dress among the others
at the side of the road and sat down next to the simple woman. She
joined in the argument that had not let up.
There was a woman in a long black habit who stopped her journey and
went to the naked woman. "My child," she said, "you are naked, let me
clothe you. Here, take my habit. It is warm and safe."
"Safe?" questioned the naked woman. "It's weight is very great."
"Yes," said the holy woman. "It holds the secrets of a hundred
thousand souls. One must be very strong to wear it, but must show
that strength in silence and servitude. The wearer of this habit must
understand birth, but never bear; must understand the cravings of the
flesh, but never experience them; must understand the ways of the
world, but never be part of it. The woman who wears this must
sacrifice herself constantly for the needs of others and never fill
her own. She must punish herself for thoughts and longings that
extend beyond the confines of cloistered walls."
"I am neither cold not fearful," said the naked woman. "Take back you
habit." But the holy woman placed the habit with the other dresses at
the roadside and sat and entered into the argument that continued
between the elaborate woman, the simple woman and the sensuous woman.
There was a woman in a grey suit who stopped her journey and went to
the naked woman saying, "Here, this tweed would look smart on you.
Its lines are professionally tailored to give a serious appearance."
She handed the suit to the naked woman.
"Now why does this garment carry so much weight?"
"Don't be fooled by its professional appearance. The wearer of this
suit must live in the sterile world and must never be part of any of
the worlds you have seen so far. This woman must never be beautiful
and artistic, for that would distract people from the business at
hand; she must never bear children or have any relationship that
would slow her progress to the top of her field. She must never be
sensuous, for she would then be the mark of wolves who would find any
way to destroy her and her power. She must also endure being mocked
as a dyke by those who fail to understand the purposes behind her
sexlessness. She must never be holy, for the world of the spirit
weakens the power of the world of the rational. It is seen as
foolishness and gets in the way of advancement with its silly notions
of ethics and morality. So the wearer of the dress must remain closed
like a prison against all outside forces that would drain her of her
power."
"Your world is frightening," said the naked woman. "Take back your
suit." But the professional woman tossed her suit among the other
garments, sat and joined in the argument, insisting that of all the
other garments, hers had been the heaviest. The women argued beside
the naked woman far into the night. At some point their argument
changed from self-pity to blame upon the other. As each experienced
the pointed finger of the others, she began to see that there were
things about her dress that were worthy and good. There were things
that each was not ashamed of or encumbered by.
"I know how to enjoy my body, to feel the pleasure of physical love,"
said the sensuous woman.
"Oh, teach me that," said the holy woman, "and I will teach you the
wonder of the quest for union with God."
"I know how to organize a large business and make it run smoothly,
and how to handle many things in the face of emergency," said the
professional woman.
"Oh, teach me," said the elaborate woman,"and I will teach you how to
make yourself beautiful so that you can enjoy the appearance of your
body."
"Teach me my attraction also," said the simple woman, "and I will
teach you how to bear and love a child."
New life sprang up among the women and they fashioned for themselves
garments out of the clothing that had piled at the side of the road,
each unique and sharing parts of each. As they taught and worked, the
naked woman got up and walked to the next intersection east of them;
and sat down.
And Jesus said to the young women, "Those who have ears to hear, let
them hear."
author: Ruether, Rosemary Radford
TEXT detail: gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/Rosemary_Radford_Ruether
LOC: BL458 .W572
tags: book,gender,scripture
title: Womanguides
# Tags
DIR book
DIR gender
DIR scripture