¹ See Turner, Pauline and Cooke, Bernard, “Feminist Thought and Systematic Theology,” Horizons 11/1 (Spring 1984), 125–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

² See Fiorenza, Elisabeth Schüssler, “Breaking the Silence—Becoming Invisible” in Fiorenza, Elisabeth Schüssler and Collins, Mary, eds., Women: Invisible in Church and Theology (Edinburgh: T. T. Clark, 1985), p. 9.Google Scholar

³ Holmstrom, Nancy, “Do Women Have a Distinct Nature?” in Pearsall, Marilyn, ed., Women and Values: Readings in Recent Feminist Philosophy (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1986), p. 51.Google Scholar

⁴ For many Catholic women, awareness of just how misogynist the Church's theological tradition has been began with a reading of studies which included detailed historical summaries, e.g., Daly, Mary, The Church and the Second Sex (New York: Harper and Row, 1968)Google Scholar, Tavard, George, Woman in Christian Tradition (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1973)Google Scholar, and Ruether, Rosemary Radford, ed., Religion and Sexism (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974).Google Scholar

⁵ The matter of the imago Dei is an exceedingly important one, and one that deserves in-depth study. The idea that man and woman in some way share in the divine nature is absolutely fundamental to the whole Christian economy. While today it is presumed that men and women equally possess the image of God, a survey of the earliest centuries shows there has been an obvious difference of opinion about this. Some of the Antiochene fathers (e.g., Diodore of Tarsus, Ambrosiaster) held that woman did not possess the image at all. There were also those who, following Paul (1 Cor ll:3ff.), believed that the image in women was different than that in Adam because while “Adam was formed immediately to the image of God, the female was formed immediately to the image of man … therefore to the image of God mediately, through the image of God that is the male,” cited in Walter, J.Burghardt, S.J., , The Image of God in Man According to Cyril of Alexandria (Woodstock, MD: Woodstock College Press, 1957), pp. 134–35.Google Scholar And of course, Aquinas's own Aristotelian categories seem to commit him to the view that God's image in woman is different, i.e., less, than it is in man. Since the rational soul is proportioned to the body, and woman's body is inferior to man's, the feminine rational soul is consequently less perfect than the masculine. See Borresen, Kari Elisabeth, Subordination and Equivalence: The Nature and Role of Woman in Augustine and Thomas Aquinas (Washington: University Press of America, 1981), pp. 315–16.Google Scholar

⁶ ”Man is the image of God by being solely what he is, an image so perfect, so whole, that when woman is joined with him it makes only one image,” De trin. XII, 7, 10.

⁷ Borresen, p. 29.

⁸ Quaestiones in Heptateuchum 419; Gen. c. Manich. II, 13, 18;Google ScholarDemor. eccl. cath.I, 30, 63.Google Scholar Augustine speculates that this may be due to the fact that because Adam was formed first, he enjoyed intellectual superiority as far as knowledge is concerned, De Gen. ad litt. XI, 42.Google Scholar

⁹ E.g., Nyssa, Gregory, De Opif. Horn. 16.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Summa Theologiae I, 92,2,c;Google Scholar also see I, 93, 4, ad 1; see Borresen, pp. 162-63.

¹¹ See McLaughlin, Eleanor C., “Equality of Souls, Inequality of Sexes: Woman in Medieval Theology” in Ruether, , ed., Religion and Sexism, pp. 217–18.Google Scholar

¹² Ep. 107, toLaeta; see Ruether, , “Misogynism and Virginal Feminism in the Fathers of the Church,” in her Religion and Sexism, p. 170.Google Scholar

¹³ De exhortatione castitatis, 9.

¹⁴ Cited in Tavard, , Woman in Christian Tradition, p. 95.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Johnson, Elizabeth A., “The Marian Tradition and the Reality of Women,” Horizons 12/1 (Spring 1985), 123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁶ Ibid., p. 124.

¹⁷ Bouyer, Louis, The Seat of Wisdom (New York: Pantheon, 1962), p. 87.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Pius XII, October 21, 1945 address to Italian Women.

¹⁹ Pius XII, September 21, 1948 speech to International Association for the Protection of the Girl.

²⁰ Leo XIII, Encyclical Letter, Rerum Novarum, 15 May 1891.

²¹ Pius, XI, Encyclical Letter, Divini Illius Magistri, 31 December, 1929.Google Scholar

²² Declaration on Christian Education, n. 8.

²³ For instance, see Durden-Smith, Jo and Desimone, Diane, Sex and the Brain (New York: Arbor House, 1983), pp. 102–03, 114, 121–22.Google Scholar

²⁴ It is also true that for generations, theologians used the metaphor, “becoming male,” to define the religious ideal for woman; such usage reflects the belief that only by a life of virginal asceticism, could a woman hope to overcome the inherent debilities of feminine nature and achieve holiness; see Vogt, Kari, “‘Becoming Male’: One Aspect of an Early Christian Anthropology” in Fiorenza, and Collins, , pp. 72–83.Google Scholar As several other scholars observe, this type of thinking ultimately led to the suggestion that at history's end, every resurrection body would be male.

²⁵ Carr, Anne, “Theological Anthropology and the Experience of Women,” Chicago Studies 19 (1980), 114.Google ScholarWojtyla, Karol takes such a position in Love and Responsibility (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1981).Google Scholar

²⁶ Ruether, Rosemary R. provides a helpful summary of this question in a chapter entitled “Christology and Feminism: Can A Male Savior Save Women?” in her To Change the World: Christology and Cultural Criticism (New York: Crossroad, 1985), pp. 45–56.Google Scholar

²⁷ Aristotle, for example, conceived the distinction between male and female natures to lie in woman's lack of an appropriate degree of soul heat: because she is “unable to concoct, or cook her menstrual blood to the final state of refinement, i.e., semen,” the philosopher concluded that woman represents only partial humanity; see Whitbeck, Caroline, “Theories of Sex Difference,” Philosophical Forum 5 (1973–1974), 56.Google Scholar

²⁸ Quran, Charles E., Directions in Fundamental Moral Theology (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986), p. 186.Google Scholar

²⁹ Holmstrom, p. 57.

³⁰ Ibid., p. 56.

³¹ Ibid., p. 59.

³² Ibid.

³³ Ibid., p. 53.

³⁴ Ibid., p. 56.

³⁵ Ibid., p. 58.

³⁶ Ibid.

³⁷ E.g., John Chrysostom, Discourse 4 on Genesis.

³⁸ Clark, Elizabeth, Women in the Early Church (Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1983).Google Scholar Augustine and Aquinas are among those who argue that with the fall, that subordination was merely increased.

³⁹ In the nineteenth century, Elizabeth Cady Stanton proposed to publish a corrective feminist interpretation of the Bible when she realized that rather than being an ally, scripture became a potent political weapon against women's struggle for liberation; see Fiorenza, Elisabeth Schüssler, In Memory of Her (New York: Crossroad, 1983), pp. 7–8.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Cited in Spretnak, Charlene, “Christian Right's ‘Holy War’“ in Spretnak, Charlene, ed., The Politics of Women's Spirituality (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor, 1982), p. 472.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Ibid.

⁴² Borreson, Kari finds that the emphasis given to the complementarity of male and female merely masks the belief that “male and female roles are not interchangeable” (“Male/female Typology in the Church,” Theology Digest 31 [1984], 25).Google Scholar

⁴³ Gudorf, Christine, “Renewal or Repatriarchalization?,” Horizons 10/2 (Fall 1983), 250.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Paul VI quoted in Daly, Mary, Beyond God the Father (Boston: Beacon, 1973), p. 3.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Paul, John II, Familiaris Consortio, December 15, 1981.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Christ, Carol, “Why Women Need the Goddess” in Spretnak, , ed., The Politics of Women's Spirituality, p. 78.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Ibid.

⁴⁸ Harrison, Beverly, Our Right to Choose (Boston: Beacon, 1983), p. 9.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Ibid., p. 8.

⁵⁰ In addition to Rosemary Ruether's substantial body of work, one should consult Daly, Beyond God the Father; Russell, Letty, Human Liberation in a Feminist Perspective: A Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1974);Google ScholarWilson-Kastner, Patricia, Faith, Feminism, and the Christ (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983).Google Scholar

⁵¹ While there is a growing body of work reflecting feminist efforts to restate the basic Christian meanings in more inclusive terms, I will limit my discussion here to the specific points of critique developed in what I consider to be classics of feminist theological analysis, i.e., the works of Valerie Saiving Goldstein and Judith Plasko w. At the same time, Paul Tillich and Reinhold Niebuhr, the subjects of Plaskow's study, represent the mainstream of modern Protestant theological interpretation.

⁵² Goldstein, Valerie Saiving, “The Human Situation: A Feminine View,” Journal of Religion 40 (1960), 100–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵³ Plaskow, Judith, Sex, Sin and Grace: Women's Experience and the Theologies of Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1980), p. 2.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Ibid., p. 3.

⁵⁵ Ibid., pp. 83-94.

⁵⁶ Ibid., pp. 84-86.

⁵⁷ Ibid., p. 87.

⁵⁸ Ibid., p. 89.

⁵⁹ Goldstein, quoted in Plaskow, pp. 87-88.

⁶⁰ Plaskow, p. 90.

⁶¹ Ibid., p. 157.

⁶² Ibid.

⁶³ Ibid.

⁶⁴ Ibid., p. 175; at one point, Plaskow suggests that perhaps “one must be a bit Pelagian to be faithful to women's experience!

⁶⁵ Goldstein, p. 102.

⁶⁶ In the area of psychology, one of the most important studies is that of Gilligan, Carol, In a Different Voice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982)Google Scholar, who argues that women tend to have a more positive view of the world than men because of their earliest experiences. Gilligan also insists that this helps to explain why women also construe problems of morality differently. A significant new work on the subject of women's experience is Belenky, Mary Field, Clinchy, Blythe McVicker, Goldberger, Nancy Rule, and Tarule, Jill Mattuck, Women's Ways of Knowing: The Development of Self, Voice, and Mind (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1986).Google Scholar A basic thesis here is that while men regularly use the metaphor of sight to describe the experience of knowing, of discovering truth, women are more likely to explain this in terms of speaking/hearing, of “gaining a voice.”

⁶⁷ Plaskow, p. 9.

⁶⁸ Tillich, Paul, Systematic Theology, 3 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975 ed.), 1:59–66.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ Tracy, David, Blessed Rage for Order (New York: Seabury, 1975).Google Scholar

⁷⁰ In his “Particular Questions with General Consensus” in Swidler, Leonard, ed., Consensus in Theology: A Dialogue with Hans Küngand Edward Schillebeeckx (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1980), pp. 33–39Google Scholar, Tracy observes that he finds Schillebeeckx and Kting to be in substantial methodological agreement with this proposal (p. 34).

⁷¹ Daly, Mary, however, suggests that under the patriarchal system of the academy, “Method has wiped out women's questions so totally that even women have not been able to hear and formulate our own questions to meet our own experiences” (Beyond God the Father, pp. 11–12).Google Scholar

⁷² Andolsen, Barbara, Gudorf, Christine, and Pellauer, Mary, eds., Women's Consciousness, Women's Conscience (New York: Winston, 1985), p. xiii.Google Scholar

⁷³ Ibid., p. xii.

⁷⁴ Ibid., p. xxiv.

⁷⁵ Careful analysis of these theories can be found in Whitbeck, , “Theories of Sex Difference,” pp. 54–80.Google Scholar

⁷⁶ For an analysis of the current state of the question, see Andolsen, Barbara, “Gender and Sex Roles in Recent Religious Ethics Literature,” Religious Studies Review 11 (July 1985), 217–23;Google Scholar and Kahoe, Richard, “Social Science of Gender Differences: Ideological Battleground,” Religious Studies Review 11 (July 1985), 223–28.Google Scholar

⁷⁷ “My contention will be that all significant explicitly religious language and experience (the ‘religions’) and all significant implicitly religious characteristics of our common experience (the ‘religious dimension’) will bear at least the ‘family resemblance’ of articulating or implying a limit-experience, a limit-language, or a limit-dimension” (Tracy, p. 93).

⁷⁸ Ibid., p. 106.

⁷⁹ Ibid., p. 107.

⁸⁰ Ibid.

⁸¹ See, e.g., Gilligan, pp. 7-8.

⁸² Ibid., p. 8.

⁸³ Chodorow, Nancy, The Reproduction of Mothering (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), p. 167.Google Scholar

⁸⁴ Ibid., p. 38.

⁸⁵ Gilligan, p. 29.

⁸⁶ Ibid.

⁸⁷ See Tracy, pp. 119-45.

⁸⁸ Ruether, Rosemary, “Is a New Consensus Possible?” in Swidler, , ed., Consensus in Theology?, pp. 63–68.Google Scholar

⁸⁹ Ibid., p. 67.