Przestrzeń kobiety w chrześcijańskiej koncepcji Boga : głosy teologów XX-wiecznych a (kon)teksty feminizmu

Abstract

The book presents a polemic with the feminist critique of Christianity, in particular with regards to the supposed androcentrism of the Christian doctrine. Accordingly, I take into account the relation between the masculine and the feminine element within the major areas of theological investigation, that is, in classical christology, mariology and trinitarian theology, in biblical ontology and Christian personalism. My polemic takes a variety of routes. Its ultimate aim is not simply to dismiss the very idea of Christian androcentrism (the issue is too broad to be covered in a single line of argumentation). Rather, while analyzing feminist discourse on Christianity, I argue the inadequacy of its subject-matter and the ideological distortion of its form. That reveals in turn a considerable communication gap between major voices of contemporary feminism (in particular, French cultural feminism, radical and neo-orthodox feminist theology), on the one hand, and twentieth-century classical theology and biblical exegesis, on the other. More than once feminist discourse on Christianity constructs straw men to sustain the conflict. In large part the argument depends on the use of spatial metaphors. References to spatial experience, I propose, permit one to formulate, instead flexible, descriptions of what man and woman are – in relation to each other (masculinity and femininity) and with regards to the newly born life (fatherhood and motherhood). It is also through references to space that one can see in an other than androcentric manner the most frequent controversies of feminist reflection on Christianity: God the Father; historical Jesus versus Christ the Saviour; Mary, God’s Virgin Mother; the female principle in the mythical and theological context; Sophia (Divine Wisdom) and Three Divine Persons; and the biblical story of woman being made out of man’s rib. Androcentrism implies the idea of one element being prior to another. However, priority amounts to dominance nowhere but in the static system of two antagonized elements. My argument reveals then, step by step, where and how in feminist argumentation androcentrism is imposed on Christian thinking rather than shown to be present in it. The major confusion seems to result from replacing the Christian persona with the modern concept of the Subject (objectifying its Other). The concept of identity thus formulated leaves no room for the dynamic “exchange of gifts”, and this in turn precludes the proper understanding of (fundamental to Christian thinking) ideas of Creation and Incarnation (including the definition of the body that these ideas imply). After all, it is the relational nature of persona (and not the antagonism of Subject–Object) that lends meaning to the images, figures and characters that the feminist critiques of Christianity grapple with.