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| AUSTRALASIAN THEOLOGICAL STUDIES |
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| AUSTRALASIAN THEOLOGICAL STUDIES |
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Volume 10, Number 2, June 1997 Feminist Theology The Next Stage Edited by Dorothy A. Lee and Muriel Porter Contents, Abstracts, Notes on Contributors Articles Dorothy A. Lee Abstract: From a hermeneutical perspective, the method of examining the prominence and status of women and female characters in a given text is an important but partial way of dealing with biblical texts. Feminist theology needs to recover a sense of "biblical theology" (despite the problems associated with that term), a theology that is sensitive to women's experience and theological reflection. The Johannine notion of "abiding" provides an example of such biblical theology. It is focused on the centrality of relationship, intimacy, and reciprocity, challenging Enlightenment individualism and subject-object bifurcation. Patricia Moss Abstract: The question of the origins of women's asceticism in Christianity is one of the most intriguing puzzles in the history of the early church, at first glance seeming to appear virtually out of nowhere. This paper seeks to untangle the threads of evidence a little, first by exploring the precedents for women's asceticism in the Jewish and Grĉco-Roman worlds, and then by suggesting possible motives for Christian women's asceticism in Corinth and the community of the Pastoral Epistles. Elaine Wainwright Graeme Garrett Abstract: Any attempt to talk about God today must accept the challenge of feminist theology. This article examines some aspects of the feminist critique of traditional christology and suggests a possible response in terms of "rule 4". That is, reflecting on George Lindbeck's claim that there are three regulative principles at work in the shaping of the classic doctrines of the incarnation and the trinity, the author suggests that feminist theology has brought to light a fourth rule: only those things may be claimed as theologically essential in the interpretation of Christ as could equally well be claimed for an imaginative Christa. Denis Edwards Abstract: Theology today is challenged to engage with three great inter-related movements, the struggle for justice for the poor of the Earth, the feminist movement and the ecological movement. In this article the author deals with the question, "How do we think about God in the light of biological evolution?" in terms of a theology of God as a God of mutual relations. It is argued that the fundamental nature of reality is inter-relational, that the God of evolution is a God of mutual friendship, and that God is self-limited in love, making space within for creation. Maryanne Confoy Abstract: To understand women's spirituality within the Christian frame-work it is essential to look at traditional cultural attitudes which have contributed to the (de-?)formation of women's sexuality. This article presents an overview of some significant historical influences that have shaped the contemporary western understanding of women's sexuality; it offers a critique of these influences through an analysis of three movements in the liberating understanding of women's spirituality; it also proposes elements of an integral Christian spirituality for women that takes account of the reclaiming of women's sexuality. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza Abstract: The author attempts to find a way between defence of religion and the bible on the one hand and the exodus from religion and church on the other. In reclaiming the authority of wo/men as religious-theological subjects for interpreting biblical texts, the act of biblical interpretation emerges as a moment in the global struggle for liberation. This essay has four parts: Scripture as a site of struggle over theological authority; the bible as a site of struggle over religious meaning; wo/men's struggles as a site of biblical interpretation; and reclaiming a radical democratic feminist tradition.
Muriel Porter, whose doctoral studies were in Reformation church history, is a lay theologian in the Anglican Church in Australia. She was a founding member of the Movement for the Ordination of Women and is senior lecturer in journalism at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. Her recent publications include Women in the church: the great ordination debate in Australia (Melbourne: Penguin, 1989) and Sex, marriage and the church: patterns of change (Melbourne: HarperCollins, 1996). Dorothy A. Lee is Professor of New Testament in the Uniting Church Theological Hall at the United Faculty of Theology in Melbourne. Her recent publications include The symbolic narratives of the Fourth Gospel (Sheffield: JSNTS, 1994); Freedom and entrapment: women thinking theology (co-edited with Maryanne Confoy and Joan Nowotny [Melbourne: Dove, 1995]); and The easy yoke: studies in Matthew's spirituality (Melbourne: JBCE, 1996). Patricia Moss studied theology at the Brisbane College of Theology and is currently pursuing post-graduate studies in women's history at Griffith University. Her particular interest is the influence of religion on women's lives and the ways in which women interpret and often subvert the prevailing ideology about "women's place". Elaine Wainwright lectures in Biblical Studies and Feminist Theology in the Brisbane College of Theology and has recently been appointed Program Focus Advisor to the Program Focus in Women's Studies in Theology in that College. She is a member of the Faculty of Theology at Griffith University. Currently she has two manuscripts awaiting publication: Shall we look for another? Engendering reading and the Matthean Jesus (Orbis) and New Testament women, Storytellers Companion (Abingdon). Graeme Garrett, an Anglican priest, has degrees in theology from Melbourne and Berkeley and is senior lecturer in theology and Dean of Studies at St Mark's National Theological Centre in Canberra. He is also the editor of St Mark's Review. Denis Edwards lectures in systematic theology at St Francis Xavier's Seminary within the Adelaide College of Divinity. He is a Roman Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of Adelaide. He has authored a number of books, the most recent being Jesus the Wisdom of God: an ecological theology (Maryknoll NY: Orbis, 1995). Maryanne Confoy R.S.C. is a member of the faculty of Jesuit Theological College in Melbourne and lectures at the United Faculty of Theology in pastoral and feminist theology and religious education. She is also a visiting lecturer at Boston College. Her study of Morris West is shortly to be published in Melbourne by HarperCollins. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza is Krister Stendahl Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School. She is best known for her now classic work, In memory of her: a feminist theological reconstruction of christian origins. Her most recent publication is Jesus - Miriam's child, Sophia's prophet: critical essays in feminist christology. |