Gender and theology: Ruether and Daly

Overview

Recall questions on Ruether on the maleness of Christ, God as female Wisdom and Jesus as Wisdom made flesh, Daly on male language for God, the unholy trinity and her alternative to Christian worship, how the two differ, criticisms of each, and whether Christianity is essentially sexist.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   What problem are feminist theologians such as Mary Daly and Rosemary Radford Ruether addressing?

   Model answer

   They argue that Christianity has been shaped throughout by male authority and male imagery: God is habitually spoken of as he, the incarnation is male, the leadership of most churches has been male, and the tradition's authoritative interpreters were men. Their claim is that this is not incidental decoration but has functioned to make the subordination of women look like the order of things. Where they part company is over what follows - reform of the tradition, or departure from it.

2. 2

   Who was Rosemary Radford Ruether, and what was her basic method?

   Model answer

   She was an American Catholic theologian, born in 1936 and active until her death in 2022, best known for Sexism and God-Talk. She remained within Christianity and worked to reform it, arguing that the tradition contains resources against its own sexism which have been suppressed. Her governing test is that whatever diminishes the full humanity of women cannot be of God or count as redemptive - and she applies that test to scripture and doctrine alike rather than to society only.

3. 3

   Why does the maleness of Christ create a problem for feminist theology?

   Model answer

   Because if the saviour had to be male, and if the incarnation reveals what God is like, it can be argued that maleness is closer to the divine and that women are saved by someone who does not share what is most distinctive about them. The point has practical consequences too: it has been used to argue that only men can represent Christ at the altar. The question of whether a male saviour is able to save women at all is therefore not abstract.

4. 4

   How does Ruether answer the problem of Christ's maleness?

   Model answer

   She argues that the Gospels present a Jesus who dismantles rather than embodies male privilege. He does not fulfil the expectation of a conquering warrior figure who would restore national power; he criticises hierarchy, associates with women and outcasts, and dies a victim rather than a victor. His maleness is therefore not what saves; if anything it is significant because a male who renounces domination exposes the system. On her account the incarnation continues in the community rather than being sealed in one man's body.

5. 5

   What does Ruether mean when she speaks of God as female Wisdom?

   Model answer

   She draws on the strand of the Jewish scriptures in which divine Wisdom is personified in female terms, present at creation and active in the world, and argues that this gives Christian theology authentic female God-language rather than a modern invention. Ruether uses it to show that speaking of God in female terms is a recovery of something already in the tradition, and she experiments with names for the divine that refuse to settle into either gender.

6. 6

   Why does Ruether describe Jesus as Wisdom made flesh, and what does that achieve?

   Model answer

   Because the New Testament itself associates Jesus with divine Wisdom, and that association was later overshadowed by the language of the Word made flesh. If what became incarnate in Jesus is Wisdom, described in female terms in the tradition it comes from, then the divine reality embodied in him is not male, whatever his biological sex. That, for Ruether, breaks the link between the maleness of Jesus and the maleness of God, and so removes the barrier to women's full inclusion.

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