Leshem Shamayim: “For the sake of heaven.”

Disclaimer: I have just been possessed with an idea, by which I am somewhat surprised, because after my activity of the weekend, I would have tended to seclude myself today in solitude of the outdoors and books; but Jesus struck me, gently, but mercifully enough to grab my attention and impose community upon me. Through the past 2 weeks of recluse-like behavior and select community, I have been confronted with many serious life issues that any more community would have overwhelmed at the time, but that perhaps my thoughts have run too far and too freely with. Balance, for me, often looks like one extreme pursuit, then another in the opposing direction, only to begin my next pursuit from a middle ground. Speaking about community reminds me of the paradox Jesus presents to me: I prefer to be alone with Him, yet it seems that I am in need of that multi-person-facetted body in order to probe the depths of my Jesus. I love the diversity of perspectives I am presented through the different walks, ages, and genders of Christ’s body. Particularly the issue of gender has been on my mind, as I, a young woman, seek to put myself into entire obedience after the God-man, Jesus. The expanse of my questions is limitless, all stretching from the depths of my imagination (which has not been fully pressed yet), though some take more precedence than others. Why bother asking about female identification with the male persona of Jesus? To me, it matters right now, because of the vocation I am pursuing and the positions I am finding myself needing to take along the way. Can I, as a single young woman, manage to live Jesus-ly “one my own” ? As I experiment with reading and thoughts, I remain mindful that I sift through extreme perspectives, but find the contemplation of them necessary to root through every possibility. Jesus has told me, I think, that I have received the fullness of the Holy Spirit in the event of my salvation (Jn. 7:39; 14:26; 16:7; Ac. 1:5). If this is true and I am not gradually receiving more and more of this Spirit, I have struggled with myself, why am I not like Jesus right now, all the time? As I explore gender-specific sin tendencies, I am more and more convinced that even the gendered nature of our spirits does not imply sin, just merely specific temptations brought on by the curse. Permit me to experiment what it might like for me to relate with, in, as, to Jesus:

Here am I, Hannah, a young woman, human being created in the image of my God, Yhwh. As I confess through my nature, I find that I am filled as full as I ever could by with the Holy Ghost, that Spirit that haunts every fiber of my life, drawing, compelling, persuading, allowing. I am fully able by this gracious Spirit to whole-heartedly love and obey my Jesus. But do I, always? I look down at my hands are realize whose they are, the sinless Jesus Himself: but these hands have two parts… my will controls, His persists. How could stigmata commit sin? You have laid Your mark in me, Jesus, and I am part of You that is visible; invisible God incarnated in me. You have redeemed my flesh, my life, my being. I am not longer chained and compelled by the curse placed in my members by my free choice in my Mother Eve to rebel. Yet her stain persists in me, and at each turn I am tempted to give in, though You did not. I gave down at my hands… was it an illusion of those wounds?

I see scars forming, opening to reveal open wounds, self-inflicted, deeper with each sin, reopened scars. They are not Yours, You never caused them. But here I am, in You, with You, and You are broken in me because of me. We have exchanged places, and I am so unworthy, but with Your healing and resurrection I must bear Your crucifixion for others. Those old tendencies and temptations that I know so well orbit my self, and it is for my  own sake that I wish to die, selfishly rejecting Your sacrifice as insufficient blood for my guilt. My life as constant sacrifice for others? I am confused, did I not die to me in order to live for You? It seems with each cross I run to assist another in, the old that I consider dead rears up a decomposing head from the grave; I impulsively place my hands over another’s: but I cannot submit another’s self to You Jesus, and any resurrection must occur in You. For here I am, just a ghost, a shadow in a world of flesh, where I don’t belong.

You are holding my resurrected nature, Yours body is mine, we inhabit one another. We have a beautiful unity as long as I consider myself dead to sin. Yet my own mind does not forget and rest in trust, life You have called me: a life shared with others. We run away to the desert, You and I Jesus, when all the world feels as if its closing in around me, in the shelter of Your wings I hide and You restore me to uprightness—Yet uprightness is so hard to maintain where You call me. A woman amid a world of endless needs, I want to replace the Savior with myself, instinctively stretching out my arms without Jesus… yet I cannot stretch wide enough to embrace all, and the burdens of one overwhelm and break me, showing me that I cannot bear another’s needs without taking up my own. Jesus, I am so weak, I do not understand because the life I see before me is fuller of opportunity than You intend for me, and I am enamored by every need I perceive, deceived into giving beyond the bounds You allow because I just cannot say no.

This body and spirit, Your temple and choir, cannot be made to sing strains that pierce the eardrums of the Savior without the Spirit’s direction being drowned-out, overwhelmed. I can do no good, but that You do it in me, I am too weak.

And so I stand here, and I think I am Jesus: looking out at my life, it is easy to see immaculate footprints laid out before me on the outskirts of the desert. But such Christianity is too simple, such a love too childish. My Father takes me hand and bids me, the Bride, to descend to the Bridegroom. Over the threshold spiritual vacuum, I am overwhelmed by the commotion and noise of life. I do not know where my Jesus has gone, I no longer see myself as bearing His image amongst the people. My white gown sets me apart, but I am not permitted the decency of separation of long. Wounds appear in my hands, but they are there from imperfect representations of Jesus; those who claim to want Him out of my seek to extract the life-giving blood, hoping I might become their tree of life and offer up a chalice of life-giving blood. And willingly, I extend my palms to their nails, but as they lap up the blood from my hands, it is not enough. They still feel the same, weighed down by guilt.

I take up and bear the guilt, but it is so heavy, I need help—Jesus, where are you? In me? How can You be. I think I see You, is it really You? Figures appear out of the crowd to assist me in bearing the cross of another—I guess Your personhood was too much for one body, so here are two. And too implicitly I trust and invest… more and more is requested… and suddenly my feet too are bleeding—my walk becomes painful, but I rejoice because I think I am becoming like Jesus, am being my Jesus by giving away the glory of His household. I am still an unclaimed bride, but I have forgotten that I am walking towards my Bridegroom… those that I thought were Him merely figured as attractive antichrists. I made them such, it was my fault for believing too greatly; I deceived their own hearts by trusting they were what they could not be. I have lost my new Bride innocence, and the naïve idealism of hope.

From amongst the monsters who inflicted my raw stigmata, I extract myself, but leave a piece of me behind. My love has been divided, torn like the harlot whose body was distributed amongst the twelve tribes. Are You still in me Jesus? I am alone again, hiding in another crevice of the desert… this time self-exiled out of fear rather than eager searching for my Beloved. There You come to me and weep with Me, and bid me carry on to the place where I will fully know I am Yours and just how much You love me. I am too scared, the ones I think bear Your incomprehensible image most are a mystery to me, Jesus, I cannot trust, I dare not, I have already lost a part of my love; don’t leave me my Jesus. You smile and say You have not yet, and take my hand, warning me once the desert is behind, Your Spirit will be with me, but You must go on ahead to finish preparing the place. You kiss is far too fleeting of a promise and off we set again.

Renewed in resolve, I am a woman, I am Jesus to the world as I seek Him to fully be Himself in me. I haven’t reached the wedding hall yet. I realize I am a woman and my naïve youth falls away, awkwardness emerging as I am confused by feelings. Through these I can love You more, Jesus? I think loving You still means to share myself, and again, I am betrayed, but by my own feelings which stretch beyond my comprehension. Jesus, why do my feelings draw to You and to others like You? I seek opposite pictures of You from the one I hold in my heart to compare, but as we get closer, I am told it is dangerous, and I do not understand. I am exhausted, running on edge… three parts of my love are already gone: can You not just marry me yet, Jesus my Love?

Notes on: Woman as Image in Medieval Literature, from the Twelfth Century to Dante
by Joan M. Ferrante

I suppose marriage is a natural state of being for women, unless they remain virgins (and then how do they benefit the spirituality of man? Does Bonaventure merely tweak the Aristotelian view of women but retain their value as amount of benefit to man?), and thus marriage itself if not associated with sin. Mysticism allows Bonaventure to view marriage beyond the physical function and assumed sinfulness by other thirteenth century authors like Aquinas, speaking “of marriage as a sacrament that existed before the fall; originally a symbol of the union of God and the soul.” (106) I admire the boldness of Bonaventure in furthering Bernard’s desire to obtain union with God through identification with the women, who were close to Christ, since of course women picture love, being closest to the male Christ. Bonaventure “wishes to become the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene, in order to experience the compassion they felt at Christ’s crucifixion.” (107) This must have been almost a romantic compassion, I think, because the women, rather than the men, and exalted as examples… furthered by the fact that it was women who first saw Jesus (It interests me that Bonaventure continues to call our Lord “Christ” in the masculine terminology rather than “Jesus” as we women prefer more personally)… which Bonaventure identifies as “a favour they earned by the greatness of their love.” (107) In calling men to salvation, Bonaventure proclaims that “In order to bear Christ in the soul, man must first become Mary for Mary is not only the glorification of humanity and the mirror of all virtues, she is the gate of heaven essential to man’s salvation.” (108)

While Mary is both positively and negatively upheld in religion, Ferrante states that “the philosopher-moralist tends to be antifeminist in attitude and imagery, the mystic does not.” (108) The prevailing attitude towards women is one of suspicion in which procreation is the only reason for involvement with these sinfully dangerous creatures. Poetry continues the tradition of “the entire impulse to love (coming) from inside the lover—the lady is only a passive rose…” (109) though she seems to act as the vehicle of love’s impulse, manipulating the lover out of his own desire for her. The thirteenth century male poet “has both male and female qualities. It is the effeminate side of his nature that makes him vulnerable to love” (110-11). Women are still lustfully portrayed in literature by a discord, which is resolved in the act of intercourse (satisfying the indwelling lust, I imagine), which “can bring the woman into temporary concord by routing the opposing forces.” (112) Did men really see us as so animal-like in our nature? This seems to be just further projection of man’s self onto woman.

Poetry reveals constant conflict in both the woman and the man: “the lady’s struggle is essentially between fear for her reputation and her desire to indulge the man and herself” (112) and the man struggles to justify his own lust for the woman. These desires defy the ideal of “highest love is charity or friendship…” in essence any sort of selfless love, since “sinful love is for gain” (113). The poet compares the lover’s desire to Narcissus, as in allegory, for the lover’s desire is both to reach another point of satisfaction and better understanding of self through the lady. If the lady were to play the part of Echo, a roll that the lover’s narcissism has denied her, leading to the lover’s spiritual suicide—literal damnation if he gives into the sexual desire for the mere sake of pleasure according to allegory. Comparing the ideal of love and the rejection of sexual desire, “we are left to conclude that sexual love must be rejected.” (116) The rejection of such love involves anti-feminist sentiments from women authors of the period too, espousing marriage as a necessary evil “set up to prevent wars and murders over women” (116) who do attempt to tyrannize men with their lusty appeal, though marriage robs women of their desired freedoms. This points to women as rebellious against marriage, that “one sacrament that antedated the fall” (166), and thus the fall was the woman’s attempts to be free of marital restrictions.

I suppose women are then the embodiments of the seduction of love, according to thirteenth century poetry, though authors agree that man’s susceptibility is that of his own choice: “the woman does little or nothing to set off his emotion, but once he gives himself over to it he is in her power and no good can come of their relationship.” (117) This is the rationale for male dissatisfaction once a relationship is attained, I believe. It puzzles me that men would call women more emotional if it is men who are too weak to withstand the women. In the Arthurian legend, women are revealed as opposite the chivalric tradition that “presents women as object of and inspirations for noble activity,” (118) leading to the disappointment and ruin of those who purse their love. Yet even in the quest for the Holy Grail, women must be condemned as a distraction to the physical and spiritual demands for purity. Again, the theme “the only good women…are virgins” (119) is repeated, for the virgin woman is able to figure the ideal of Mary, guiding men to faith as a Christ figure through self-sacrifice. Yet even the virgins are not independent beings, but rely on the protection of men, as is the responsibility of those within the Round Table, for maintained protection against physical jeopardy, which would ruin their spiritual condition as intermediary for men. Men have an obligation to be “concerned with the protection of the helpless…” to maintain the chivalric ethic “but when their attention shifts to the salvation of their souls, the chivalric code falls apart.” (120) Thus even under the guise of chivalry, women tempt men to betray their hope of union with God, and thus men appear selfish and denying of chivalry to maintain their eternal destinies.

Women’s wiles are often portrayed through magic in thirteenth century literature, for their love is the destruction of men’s purity if he is willing to engage her. Writers portray “man’s willingness (as) the source of the woman’s power… the man must come to her, must let himself be caught, before she can control him.” (121) The sin nature of women from the perspective of attempting to be free of God-ordained male domination in marriage portrays women as craftily utilizing the men’s weakness of desire to exercise their rebellion against God and man. This is evident in the story of Arthur and Guinevere: “Arthur, embodying the weakness as well as the strengths of his worlds” (121) is a typical lusty man, whose succumbing to desire provides a means for his own wife to commit adultery in his absence. For men of the thirteenth century, women were preying sorceresses, seizing every available opportunity to take advantage of man’s weakness to exert their inherently sinful desires of rebellion and domination through magical seduction, thereby obtaining heirs to continue their sin.

A more extreme form of controlling men’s lust is proposed in the Vulgate Cycle, “discouraging all human bonds—not only sexual attraction, but family love and chivalric fellowship—and exalting virginity and total devotion to God” (122) as a fulfilment of the ideal of love. If one cannot control oneself, why not cut off the temptation altogether? Provencal poets continues to recognize conflicting desires “in themselves, the need for refinement through the adoration of a perfect creature, and at the same time the strong physical desire to go to bed with a receptive woman” (123). Since men selected the Virgin Mary as the embodiment of this ideal creature, I wonder whether men chose a woman rather than a man because of Mary’s dual “union” with God in bearing Jesus within herself and being immaculately impregnated, whether the nature of woman seemed more innocent than men, or because if a woman could achieve purity, she was already considered so base that a man was guaranteed the ability to be pure. Through the consideration of a woman as divine or alien, she is granted autonomy from the man, but is also removed from the sphere of the living (and thus loses her humanity at the expense of angelic consideration).

The ideal woman becomes aloof and beautiful, gazing on as “the man’s faculties cannot sustain the sight of a woman’s beauty and so they are destroyed.” (123) I cannot pretend to understand the male mind or how a man visually engages a woman to stir him up to a place of fainting, but I have witnessed some men become witless at the sight of a stunning woman. It puzzles me greatly; but the thirteenth century men express their feelings through the lady’s actions of capturing the man’s mind, “threatening his heart, the soul tries to flee, but Love holds her back.” (125) Death almost seems inevitable to the man… he will physically perish if he does not look at the lady, and if he succumbs to the temptation to satisfy his eyes, his soul will die under love’s gentle hand. At close proximity then, thirteenth century men found themselves threatened by women, though at a distance, women remained very purely motivating. Of course its harder to access sin when temptation is kept far from you, but was it for the sake of temptation that men preferred space between them and feminine presence. “The removal of the woman’s presence leads the mind back to the essence of her beauty and ultimately to the source of that beauty, God.” (126) If the woman in her absent figure “is compared, directly or indirectly, to God,” (127) then is the woman truly viewed as a tool through which God moves or an obstacle to man’s desire which causes him to stumble in the pursuit of God? What is it that is so threatening about the woman, the possibility of desiring her impurely?

If reflection upon the woman, in the safe distance of remembrance, leads to contemplation of God (for these writers at least), I wonder about the men with whom we interact now. All that has been discussed is in some form archaic compared with current culture; yet as I read, I feel there must be some common thread of humanity displayed throughout the centuries. Thus far from seeing women as the cause of sin to women being the very embodiment of God in male imagery between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, a few like aspects have stuck out to me specifically (at least concerning men, from which I feel is the perspective really portrayed, despite the subject being women): almost instinctive, universal male emotional and physical desire for women; tendency to project onto women as connected to self; position of women inter-tangled with man’s spiritual welfare and relate-ability to God. I am still fascinated by how Christ was described as the Bride, creating a type for women even though submission is required too. Concluding the thought patterns of the thirteenth century, women emerge as “separate entities (from man), instruments of greater forces which work on man’s inherent nobility or weakness to save or destroy him.” (127) Somewhere in all the mess of roles and meaning which women were assigned throughout the entire spectrum of medieval literature, man realized that woman has purpose, beyond her sexual function into a spiritual aspiration by the end of the thirteenth century.

In her final chapter, Ferrante delves into the writing of Dante, who sought a revolutionary explanation for love… not merely seeking the internal reasoning but looking for external explanation beyond a mere acknowledgement of “the beneficial effect of the woman” (129) to his own soul. Dante seeks to understand the true selflessness of love by probing “to find a deeper significance in her existence and in his love for her.” (129) Instead of allowing his love for the woman hinder his love for God, but attributes the attraction he feels for the woman because of her beauty to the source of that beauty, God. God is still understood through the use of a woman: “man reaches God through woman” (131) for as the salvation of all mankind is figured in Mary, Dante found his hope of redemption in Beatrice. Ferrante clarifies that women’s participation in the salvation of man is not just limited to the symbolic, but all women “can be intermediaries between God and man through love, moving men with their beauty and God with their prayers.” (131) I find it interesting that male writers figure their own need for God intertwined with their need for women and the influence of women in their lives, even if by mere presence. This places an unrequested responsibility on women, for Dante figures the desire of men to be close to and receive guidance through women.

Dante states that his self-disclosure to women is enacted based on trust formed through their guidance of him “away from the selfish love of the early lyrics to the kind of love that will end in God.” (131) But Dante also “reserves the traditional roles so that man can act as intermediary with God for a women,” (132) making allowance for either gender to be vessel of God’s grace to the other. In seeking a woman to picture the beauty of God to him, Dante seeks after other women once Beatrice has died, though he retains his claim of loving her, attempting to divide his heart and mind “between two ladies with perfect love,” (133) rationalizing their coexistence by loving the beauty of one for delight and the virtue of the other for her action. It is interesting to travel the Divine Comedy with Dante, because while he is conflicted in love after the loss of Beatrice, part of himself is always returning to her memory and devotion to her. Dante views other women, even after Beatrice’s death, as mere replacement figures for the woman who could never be replaced. Because it is through Beatrice that Dante is equipped with “the power to ascend through the heavens,” (135) he can love no other woman because he tends toward the “identification of Beatrice with Christ in the fullest sense, as the Logos, as Theology and Faith.” (135) In this sense it would be idolatry to love another woman.

Dante’s connection with Beatrice as a crucial aspect of his salvation ascends even closer to Christ, realizing her significance as a guide for his soul to God only after her death, when she descends “even to Hell, to save the sinner who refused to heed the divine message is another echo of Christ.” (136) Dante sees love as he grows to associate Beatrice with God, revealing that there is more to love, more to God than meets the eye. Love of Beatrice allowed him to encounter Love in its veiled disclosure of God while she was alive, but through her death, Beatrice becomes even more one with the Divine in Dante’s mind. Throughout Divine Comedy, Beatrice acts as Mary’s messenger, beginning and ending the poem “with the Virgin, the mediatrix between man and God, the woman in whom all compassionate women are contained.” (139) What am I as a woman saying by objecting to the place of the Virgin Mary in a man’s perceived need of redemption? Am I denying man a typical, fundamental need for a woman in his life and subsequently in the maintenance of his purity, his existential salvation, by removing the Virgin from her assigned significance in theology? Dante sees Christ in lady Beatrice, who figures Mary as Christ figures Mary through her physical features that he took on (139). Dante invests the power of unifying the person of Christ with souls in Mary, whom he sees as the first to be fully one with God—the archetype of Christianity.

“Mary is, in other words, the counterpart of God the father, but the female side of God, the mercy that can break harsh justice.” (140) While Bonaventure and Bernard infiltrate Mary into their salvation through finding her the most relatable figure to their needs, Dante composes a “concept of a trinity of female figures who affect his salvation, all historical women—the mother of Christ, the third-century martyr (Dante’s patron saint Lucy), and the thirteenth-century Florentine woman (Beatrice).” (141) While glancing through the notes I have compiled on the these medieval writings thus far, I was struck by a notable difference in the male tone used for figures of religious intermediaries: Mary is spoken of more often by her personal name, “Mary” rather than her title, “The Virgin” or “The Virgin Mary.” Contrastingly, however, the male writers of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries speak of Jesus as “The Christ” rather than His personal name, “Jesus…” indicating a greater feeling of distance with Jesus than Mary. I wonder if men found it easier to love Mary than Jesus, based on their almost exclusive understanding of love through the marriage analogy. While one theologian dares to make Jesus the Bride figure, the marital understanding of love requires a feminine figure, and not many were willing to make Jesus feminine; they would rather sacrifice their own masculinity through identification with Mary.

Since Dante sees love and mercy as feminine traits of God, he sees these same traits in man as good, though in weakness, these same traits are sometimes portrayed in the Comedy as moral instability, attempting to depict “that there is no essential distinction of sex in eternity” (141-2). Only in Hell and Purgatory does Dante evidence gender distinctions, intending to convey shame and the guilt associated with gender sin tendencies, but “in Paradise the confusion of sex contributes to the sense of mankind as one. When I was speaking with a friend conveying my confusion of human nature and conception of Heaven, I expressed an interest in never obtaining the sorts of desires that are specific to gender, but rather while still being woman, being ambiguous in my discernment between man and woman. Unlike Dante, I mentally allow for gender distinctions in my picture of Heaven… for the beauty of thought difference and complement, but in Heaven, I think we will understand a sort of love that transcends human gender. I think Jesus embodied this love, which I say confidently, although His love did not abolish His gender. Man and woman were created before the Fall with gender, in perfect harmony, but without sin. Somehow there must be a divine form of perfect love that will not imply sin to the interaction of the genders, but free men and women to be wholly as they were made through equalizing distinctions.

For men, women’s love binds him “not only through sexual ties but through family ties” (147) as a part of her action in his salvation: from Dante’s perspective, the family continues in Purgatory, but are not active in Hell. In Purgatory, “family ties also connect souls with earth” (147) referring to the Catholic tradition of praying for the repose of the dead, which benefits the soul in purgatory. Women in their childbearing abilities are men’s ties to this redemptive act of prayer, Dante espouses, though men are called to pray for the repose of women’s souls too. Since gender is nonexistent in Dante’s Paradise, family is universal, not bound by the distinctions of specific earthly relations. I find it interesting, if gender is not distinguishable in Heaven, that figures such as Jesus and Mary retain the male/female identity; perhaps then, gender is just distinguished as an active feature rather than a fact. Though Dante’s Paradise eliminates marriage, it is interesting to see the coupling he assigns to the figure of Mary: “she is usually paired with men, seldom with other women” (148) as examples of virtue. I wonder if Dante is playing on his theme of male need of females in salvation, part of the larger theme of mutual dependency for salvation. If one is seeking a practical abstraction of this concept, I think men and woman are not only needed in the universal body of Christ, but also to offer contrasting spiritual benefit. In the end of Earthly Paradise, however, “where man is restored to a state of innocence, they (virtues) appear as women,” (148) images of a restored Eve (whom Dante does blame for sin).

Through Comedy, Dante portrays salvation, the end goal of men and women (though emphasized as of men in medieval literature in general and Dante’s writing specifically) is perfection achieves “by the reunion, in a restored state of innocence, of man and woman.” (150) Is this too not the goal of Christianity, which Paul encourages us can be achieved in our loving of one another here in earth: “There can be neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither slave nor freeman, there can be neither male nor freeman, there can be neither male nor female—for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3.28, NJB) Because love is central to Dante’s idea of Paradise, he includes “earthly human love (as) a major part of love, which he does not deny even in heaven.” (151) Dante confuses me with his marriage allegory between men and women who are unconcerned with love in the sense of sexual distinction. Thus Dante adds to the picture of unity with God depicted at the end of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, continuing to utilize woman as images through which man achieves salvation, all focused on Mary “through whom Christ brought salvation to all men…Dante says that it is through Mary and through human love for a real woman that he can achieve union with God.” (152) Dante allows men the expression of their emotion in ideals, but forces some sense of realism in acknowledgment of the need to love the woman in whom the man can invest himself. I think out of all perspectives on women espoused through male use of female imagery, I am most appreciative of Dante’s assignment of sacramental meaning to womanhood. By requiring a self-sacrificing love on the part of the man, not just the woman, Dante ends the thirteenth century with redemption of the female image in spite of his continued blame for initial sin. We women remain paradoxical in male thought… he tries to project himself upon us, but the need overwhelms the desire for a scapegoat.

Notes on: Woman as Image in Medieval Literature, from the Twelfth Century to Dante
by Joan M. Ferrante

Perhaps these final verses in the Gospel of Thomas accurately represent male sentiment (and thus religious sentiment as a whole) towards women and their interaction with salvation in the period of literature I am reading on (the Medieval Ages):

112. Jesus said, “Damn the flesh that depends on the soul. Damn the soul that depends on the flesh.”
113. His disciples said to him, “When will the kingdom come?”
“It will not come by watching for it. It will not be said, ‘Look, here!’ or ‘Look, there!’ Rather, the Father’s kingdom is spread out upon the earth, and people don’t see it.”
[Saying probably added to the original collection at a later date:]
114. Simon Peter said to them, “Make Mary leave us, for females don’t deserve life.”
Jesus said, “Look, I will guide her to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every female who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of Heaven.”

If women were to become male in order to achieve salvation and enter the Kingdom of Heaven and women are valued for their child-bearing abilities, is a woman who cannot produce children more male and less female because of this inability? The woman is constantly equated with flesh and feeling in a base manner, since we were the objects of men’s desire, and thus guilty of the desire (it is projected on us). That the female is needed as a complement for man to achieve harmony and unity with the divine is admitted, but her weakness and projected tendency to sin is also a hindrance from man’s attaining to the forms, ideals, and virtues of the divine. Thus the woman needs to become more male; the perfect woman is the image of Virgin Mary, able to conceive Christ while remaining pure in the flesh, a perfect woman, but male in her femininity, devoid of the weakness. So men find comfort in attaining to Mary, they find expression in her because they are deprived of all other women, in whom they found expression of themselves. The men try to become Mary, whom they can find identity and expression in because of her femininity (female being established as the freest place of self-exploration and self-discipline… both in regards to women as objects of man’s desires and responsibility entrusted to him), and through her purity and perceived position of union with God as mother of Jesus, seek identification with her in order to achieve union with God. Of course, as C.S. Lewis once put, all men are feminine when compared to God.

I almost like the idea of Jesus as a Third Thing, rather than Mary, a perfect unity and image of God for both genders, because Mary biblically is not substantiated as she is portrayed in such perfect symbolism. Perhaps each gender wants to achieve union with God in a way that is denied it because of the gender: women seek to be like Jesus in a male form, because we can already picture ourselves, through gender, as His bride. We seek like roles for ourselves in His work, a translation of the male acts of Jesus into female capability and nature. Men on the other hand, struggle with the identity of unity with God, and thus seek to embody themselves in female symbols, taking on the image of Mary, the perfect woman, to achieve sinless unity with God. Men, however, by sheer fact of gender, are already burdened with the responsibility to carry the masculine roles of Christ. Easier identification comes with less-easily achieved unity. How can man be one with God but through identification with, and how can woman be one with God, but by union with? Both might be types of the same sort of unity… different sides of the issue of oneness—which encourages a fuller understanding of Jesus.

Medieval literature tended to portray females as representatives of chaos in allegory; the wild, passionate nature of sin which, if not regulated by masculinity, would quickly grow out of control. St. Bernard unstereotypically considered the positive aspects of femininity, “birth and beginning of life” (57) while Alanus adopts the more stereotypical view of women as lustful, impure, and given over to tempting man away from the perfect. I am struck by the contrast of women with the flesh and men as ideals/thought again; reading through the major literary views of women, most were espoused by male religious writers of the 12th and 13th centuries… male religious writers who were celibate once members of their religious order, but who made be plagued by guilt from their previous life experiences. Take Augustine for example… he is well-known for the lusty youth he led, engaging in all sorts of sin, and continuing to struggle with lust upon his conversion. Naturally, if one wants to be close to God, one rejects the fleshly self and all of the sinful tendencies, which are associated with the cursed nature of man. But these men, like Augustine, were unwilling to take responsibility for their own sin tendencies once members of their religious orders, and so projected those sins, again, on the objects of their desire, the women themselves.

It is not surprising to find that “Alanus connects sex with sin in a conventional way,” going so far as to say “that it is man’s conception in lust that binds him to original sin” (57) for of course the desire which creates sexual attraction originates in the perversion of women. Looking at female nature, I tend to think it more naïve and innocent (if left to itself) then these medieval authors give credit: I theorize that most young women do not experience physical desire in the same degree as young men—in fact may even be naturally ignorant to it until introduced. Song of Songs 3.5 warns young women to not awaken love before its time… that I think is a combination of warning against physical attraction and emotional attraction. In the case of emotional attraction, young women (I think, and this is all in theory) are weak in the trusting of their hearts, while it seems to me that young men tend to be naturally weak in terms of physical desire. So when the Bride warns the young women against early love, I think she is bidding them to keep their own hearts pure of over-attached emotions and to keep themselves free from entanglement with young men. We women tend to be prone to remain committed when we should not: if a young lady is in an “unequally yoked” relationship or far too early, she may remain in it because of obligation to the relational partner, or because desires have been awoken in her physically whose existence she would not have realized until contact. Alanus speaks from a male perspective on desire… one initially sexual, projecting it onto women, while I think women tend to be initially emotional in their desire and must learn the sexual aspects of romance (which is why it is so dangerous to them).

Because Alanus views sex as being basely connected with some sin, he extols the virtues of virginity, and I think it interesting that virgin women are more frequently recognized then men. Female virginity, I hesitate to say, may be an easier conquest than celibacy in males. Perhaps that is why the male writers of the forcibly-celibate time regarded virgins with such regard: if women as a gender were to guilty of lust and sensuality in the eyes of 12th and 13th century writers who projected themselves onto the women, then in their imaginations, celibacy for women would be more difficult to sustain than for men. Since the Virgin Mary embodies the perfection of womankind in religious and other tradition, she is a beacon of hope for celibate religious men, encouraging them that if a weak woman, prone to sinful sexual indulgence can live perfectly before God, so can they. Of course, this Mary is a figment of religious imagination, without biblical proof, but perhaps the function of Mary for men is the function of Jesus for women: I as a woman regard self-restraint as a harder discipline for men then for myself, so if Jesus as a man could remain holy and set apart for God, then so can I, whether gifted with celibacy or not. As mentioned in previous blogs, there is a time for God-devoted celibacy in young life before marriage, common to every human being. If one cannot learn contentment and satisfaction of any desire within that celibate state, with God alone to satisfy your soul, how can one hope to be satisfied with merely one man or woman? I would commend, then, with Alanus the virgins, who contentedly keep themselves set apart to God throughout all of life… whether they discover within themselves the gift of marriage or the gift of celibacy. In either case, the soul must not be consumed by physical desire, which I almost fear in this society.

It is an interesting remark to find medieval literature seeking a conjunction between the paradoxical female figures of mother and virgin: “the created universe is built on the wedding of opposites and there is no more perfect fusion of opposites than virgin and mother.” (58) Medieval men found further reason to exalt Mary beyond her “sinless” state, because though “mental conception is higher than physical… conception of God in the mind is common, but in the womb it is unique.” (58) Do men envy Mary this closeness with God? The religious medieval mind seems confused between a desire for the celibacy assigned to Mary (which seems to be a prerequisite for a special sort of intimacy with God) and the obligation of man to take part in the natural, creative act of conception. Male poets illustrate this “dichotomy between man’s rational and physical nature…” (59); in the religious male mind, a man is compelled by his comparison to God to take part in the very act which he feels will draw him farthest away from God. Wouldn’t it be so much simple to assume personal responsibility for unlawful desire, confess, and forsake it, then to spend one’s life running from a gift of God, deeming it a curse of nature? Obviously these monastics didn’t think so in their allegory, and were thus limited to the constraints of mind and desire divided in dichotomy.

Men continued to invest the blame for the overly-abundant problem of lust in women in the allegory of literary, creating Nature as a feminine figure that cannot control herself, “even though… she is the vicar of God,” (61) and this Nature herself must be mastered by male control, the ideal human. Nature requires conception to continue mankind, and it seems to me that the religious writers of the 12th and 13th centuries go to unnecessary lengths in order to achieve a virgin conception. Beyond physical, this ideal is transferred to the spiritual: yet the soul remains philosophically feminine and the body, supposedly invested with all base characteristics is male, a reverse in the trend. Thus in allegory, the woman is incapable of physical goodness, but the substance of pure ideas may be considered female. Allegory sought a justification of man, however, because of course physical woman was the substance of baseness—therefore Alanus’ ideal man “is in perfect balance, a marriage of natural and divine elements, of body and soul, earth and heaven, male strength and female goodness.” (64) I suppose if the Virgin Mary is accosted with titles such as “holy” and “divine,” then the only good woman must be a holy woman, an unrealistic figure of man’s ideals for himself. What a painfully deprived existence women must have had, being the abstracted ideals or sins of man’s own self imagined into female form; they were robbed of their own rights to be.

Male figuring of women reaches a more accurate depiction in courtly literature, though real women remain imprisoned beneath an idyllic symbol. The core of man’s being still finds its expression in the female form, for to the writers of courtly literature, “love can provide a man with a new and nobler identity and inspire him to great deeds in service of others, or it can cause a madness that cuts him off from his world and drives him into exile or death.” (65) Such is the power women continue to hold over men, but the men’s own voluntary submission, though men still seek to control the desire they have relinquished to an external being, dominating women themselves. In courtly literature, unlike allegory, the lover acknowledges his desire, but is confused to find that his own battle as hero has become external, his “enemies often reflect(ing) aspects of his problem.” (65) Instead of making the woman, his beloved, the object of projected conflict and inner turmoil, courtly literature provides enemies as scapegoats for man’s inner turmoil.

Yet still, “the force of love that creates conflict in the lover operates through the lady.” (66) Instead of just choosing a lady to love, the courtly literary figure of a man “incarnates Love in a lady.” (66) The courtly lady, though separate from the man, “is often a mirror image of the lover, ” (66) required to be a physical ideal that the man has created and herself as real. The courtly poet idolizes his mental ideal, projecting it onto the woman herself, but enable to deny the reality of her physical presence, which distracts from his idealism, feeding into his own desires. “The woman the poet loves is a mirror in which he sees his ideal self, what he might be,” (67) and thus the poet’s treatment of the woman as his beloved subject depends wholly on his perception of himself projected into her. In fact, the man may become so enraptured in the excellent ideal of the alter-ego he has mentally assigned to his beloved that she may even rival God in perfection before his eyes. This seems a step beyond St. Bernard’s attempt to identify with Mary’s union with God by thinking of himself as her; the courtly lover makes the woman God to unite with her, and thereby her actions and reactions affect him far more deeply.

While one might think that courtly literature redeems a woman to come extent, by seeking to unite the allegorical dichotomy man perceives as sinful (at the very least distracting) female flesh and divine female ideals, women are rendered incapable of redemption: women cannot escape the confines of the man’s mind, for that is where her worth to him lies wrapped up in his own self-image. If a courtly lady does not express acceptance for the man, he rejects himself and seeks another—but finds none, for who can accept a person who is not content with himself? The lovers of courtly writing, at first, struck me as more equal with their beloved, but indeed, they exact a greater price of the women: not only self-dejection, but taking on the personhood of the man. Maybe virginity in a convent was the only means of escape for a woman—the only way of maintaining her womanly identity, even if she were still masked by male ideals. While the courtly author portrays man as captive to guile of women, I think it is the women in whose forms the authors figured their feelings who are prisoners to abuse in men’s minds.

The abuse women suffer in courtly literature at the minds of men seems influenced by some sort of manic-depressant fluctuation in the man’s emotions: one notes a constant flux in the man’s desires… in their base sense desire the woman as a sexually fulfilling object and in their height, seek the approval of her divine ideality. As the embodiment of his imaginative love, the man sees the woman as his “other self, who represents that part of him that can be inspired by deep feeling to do great deeds or to rise above the limitations of the world.” (73) Functioning to help the man attain self-realization in the romance through his aspirations, it is no wonder the woman is the source of a man’s frustration. As much as he invests dreams and ideals in her, she is still herself and cannot be everything he hopes her to be. Instead of realizing the unattainableness  of his desires, he remains confused by his ideal when the real woman, in whose likeness he has fashioned his mental icon, disappoints his wishes. Thus the male’s narcissistic use of women is unmasked: a mere mirror in which the lover might admire and explore his own self. Thus in reality, when the man cannot “move beyond the satisfaction of his own desires” (77) in projecting his image onto a woman, his love is self-destructive, destroying the woman as well, whom he views as nothing more than his self outside of him.

Self-destruction paves the broad road to hell, where man prefers the love of himself through the being of a woman, the embodiment of a self-religion, in contrast “to a heaven which is people by old priests and devout cripples.” (79) The men of courtly literature wrapped up so much hope in embodying themselves in their women that they warped their own religious pursuit of God to permit self-idolatry. Since so much a part of their woman, the men find themselves changing gender roles with the women of their desire—the woman becomes the manipulator of the situation and the man in love the servant of her every whim, forced to please her unless he lose that self-expression he believes he will only find in her love. At times I wonder if man’s attempt at relationship with God has changed with the perception of women: as man sought to achieve union with God through the woman in allegorical literature, perhaps, in seeking to now embody love in the figure of a woman (calling her beloved) does man portray his own sentiments towards God?

Each perception of the woman, expressed in a motif of courtly literature, fashions the image of man in female flesh, hoping to achieve in her oneness—harmony and unity. Since I have noted that the male ideal of the woman and the real woman could not line up, there seems to be almost a supernatural power embedded in those undesirable actions of the woman: as a divine ideal herself, the woman acts to reveal man’s own fate and identity. But idolizing the love of a woman to the exclusion of all other pursuits, perhaps them medieval man sought for a more transcendent picture of God, but one who, like the elusive love of the woman, could not be relied upon nor constrained to follow the man’s demands. Perhaps I am realizing that women within courtly literature were not meant to be symbols only of man’s self, but also of his interaction with the divine. The woman’s identity is elusive if she portrays the concepts of courtly love, perhaps even withholding the acknowledgement of her own identity to the man. But man feels he cannot exist without love, and his devotion to the ideal of love (although his love is narcissistic) causes desperation within the confines of normal life.

Perhaps this narcissism is the only type of love of which man is confidant, and it is seen “that the defect of love lies in the man” (94) rather than the otherworldly symbol of the woman. Because the women of courtly literature serve both as objects of desire and further aspirations, there are two roles assigned to women based on the manic-depressant tendencies of their lovers: one woman is needed to fulfill the conventional needs of life and a separate women to embody the man’s ideals. However, man’s ideal of love “is defective; incapable of perfect faith in himself, he cannot believe it exists in another and so loses it,” (95) evidenced in the women’s failure to be the sole caretaker of the man’s ego, disappointing his expectations of her. But since the men’s imaginations held women in courtly literature captive to their own desires, “freedom” for a woman was found in the return of love to the man. While Ferrante notes that courtly love enables man to find new expression of himself through the personhood of the woman, but also notes that love is a freeing ages from the bonds of society, “a gift that women can partake of as fully as men.” From my reading of the literature, the act of love seems wholly focused on the person and desires of the man rather than the woman, so submitting to the love seems to allow the man full and total control—hardly a free place for a woman, even in symbolism.

This symbol of woman loses its figure as an integral part of man’s being and is allowed some more freedom by the end of the thirteenth century, when salvation, the achievement of ideals, becomes an individual pursuit. “Personal salvation is achieved at the cost of social dissolution,” including the renouncing harmony with women who are figured as a danger to “his soul because she provides him the opportunity to indulge his lower impulses.” (99) Once again, the original act of projection desire on that which is the object of desire is evident, though in this period of literature, the woman is to be rejected from men rather than assimilated into a harmonious state of existence. The growth of the monastic movement for union with God (and perceived distraction/detriment to that spiritual union that women propose with the possibility of physical union) propelled the change from women as “symbols of male qualities or projections of male ideals, they become vessels to serve man’s needs, either carrying his children or relaying God’s grace.” (100) Here women entirely lose their independent being as persons, and are transformed into tools, objects.

Even the figure of Mary suffers from a point of identification to the embodiment of the new, degraded ideal of woman, thought of as “both chaste-born and intercessor, the mediator through whom God reaches man and man reached God.” (100) How on earth was Mary assigned the role as intercessor? Potentially through the implantation of Christ within her, that the Lord and Savior of all people was once one with her through His growth in her womb. I suppose men felt that this feminine means was their only hope for unity with God—but then the analogies tended towards all-too-sexual thought tendencies. This stage in the evolution of the Virgin Mary figure truly is unique, as Ferrante points out, because Mary’s figure is invested with the previously theoretical power held by the female symbols of previous centuries. This Virgin Mary, who was a real person, is set above by this investment men make in her both actually and theologically, exalting her as “man’s defense against sin,” crucial because “man cannot reach God except through her.” (100) With the redemption of women through the personhood of Mary, thirteenth century literature is characteristically different than that of the twelfth century. From Mary’s redemption of femininity, it is a suitable place to begin, with the theological opinions on women.

Ferrante represents the major theological ideas of the time through the works of Aquinas and Bonaventure, both of whom influenced the revolutionary (for his day) feministic writing of Dante. Aquinas continues in the conventional Aristotelian tradition of femininity: that women are weaker in body and nature than men, a “male manqué” (101). The opinion on female blood, that which fates 99.9% of all womankind to be “unclean” once a month: it was interpreted as a sign of sin. From my brief readings on the purity laws in Leviticus, I don’t think the female bleeding was deemed impure because of sin being attributed to the bleeding. This was one of the factors of childbirth and sexuality that caused thirteenth century men to deem women impure. Since women’s very sex is assigned impurity, of course if makes sense that the female gender is kept in subjugation to the male, whose gender is sacramental. Ferrante distinguishes between the doctrines of male and female essence: though both human with body and soul, the female as irredeemably evil cannot embody the sacramental image of Christ as men can in the priesthood. Aquinas is scornful of women in general; even the redemptive figure of the Virgin Mary is made passive, receiving male “gifts of wisdom, miracles, and prophecy in high degree…but not in order to use them—not to teach but to contemplate.” (103) Interestingly enough, Aquinas gives females a positive light in the imagery of Christ as bride rather than bridegroom, picturing a deep anti-feminism. Everything about Aquinas’ weird beliefs on marriage regiments men and women to different moral standards entirely, binding women into everything by the possibility of children. Aquinas believes that a “woman must be bound by the needs of the unbegotten child” (104) to allow conception; this strange principle of pregnancy seems to keep women in subjugation to their husband, even in cases where the man might divorce her. For Aquinas, childbearing seems deeply connected with the sexuality of women, that sinfulness within them.

Bonaventure as a mystic views women differently because his value of love as a factor in union with God—leading to the attempted identification with women, though he continues to extol the male gender “in dignity of principle as in power of action and authority of precedence” (105) over women. However, Bonaventure assigns more meaning to women that Aquinas’ one-sided sacrament, finding more than passive power in the mothering act of conception, “which is why some children resemble their mothers more than their fathers.” (105) Bonaventure’s restoration of feminine value beyond her ability to reproduce does not keep him from conceiving “of woman as part of a man…” or “…of part of a man as woman.” (106) Since woman is the part of man “that is most receptive to God” (106), since of course God is male and everything one with Him somehow feminine or female, the woman has the greatest capability to be one with God. Bonaventure says that if the feminine “soul is faithful to God, she will give birth to the progeny of good work, or even to Christ himself.” (106) Thus females cannot only bear sin in their natures—they are allowed some space to for females to benefit male relationship with God. Again, I see no room for the woman’s relationship with God on her own, for she remains linked to the man’s spirituality.

Notes on: Woman as Image in Medieval Literature, from the Twelfth Century to Dante
by Joan M. Ferrante

In 12th Century literature, females were utilized as “symbols, aspects of philosophical and physiological problem that trouble the male world” (1) rather than independent, real people. In the male minds of literary inventors, “women personify cosmological forces that govern men’s life… they represent his ideals, his aspirations, the values of his society life.” (1) Women, though considered the least important of people, are invested with the most significance and importance because of men’s considerations of them. This was reflected in literature through women’s domination of the twelfth century hero for good or evil. Even “biblical women, if they are good or potentially redeemable, are said to represent the church; if bad they stand for the lower or weaker parts of “man, for carnal desires, or for inconsistency of mind.” (2) Something about this male desire for women almost seems an inherent (or sinful?) need for women; I would be interested in a man’s perspective on this, as I am only speaking from appearances as a woman. Male justification for this opinion states, “woman, as the most obvious object of male concupiscence, is made to represent lust and is thus held responsible for it; the object of temptation becomes the cause.” (2)

Since women are men’s ways of expressing themselves—their eternal delight or unending sorrow, I think maybe male emotions are tied up with female figures. Women are limited as much as men really limit themselves—maybe to dominate a woman before of a need for her seems equivalent to domination of self. Negative symbolism of women is more prevalent in twelfth century religious writing and positive symbolism of women is more prevalent in philosophical writing. Neo-platonic “marriage of male/female elements requires the cooperation (rather than compulsion) of female elements to preserve and maintain order. This is more positive than the religious consideration of marriage, because the love of women was considered comparable to idolatry or heresy. “In the battle between vices and virtues, which is central to the Christian morality, both groups are female; inner conflict is seen in terms of women pulling in opposite directions towards good or evil.” (2) So man’s highest and lowest impulses gravitate towards women?

Courtly literature uses female imagery to probe men’s emotions; as a lady represents the force of love to a man, “love awakens man to a new sense of himself, to higher aspirations, but sometimes he is drawn away from his love by worldly desires, which in romance, are often other women.” (2) Thus man seeks to embed his highest and lowest impulses in the figure of a woman. I wonder, could man think of himself apart from a woman? He seems to find so much of himself in her… do we women feel we can embody those values as men desire us to? How do we picture and understand our own feelings and virtues? In thirteenth century literature, “the romance quest becomes a religious quest, a personal one, which can be achieved only when the individual alienates himself from his society.” (3) This change, “the rejection of the courtly ethic” causes women as symbols to become “a temptation rather than an inspiration.” (3) Thirteenth century literature evidences the strong influence of two anti-feminist views; the Aristotelian, of women as defective men, creatures lacking in reason and useful only to bear children, and that of the moralist—of woman as a threat to man’s salvation. I wonder how we women were supposed to get salvation, or are we incapable of redemption?

I am sure I never knew more how a man deemed me as un-human than in the two who I most invested myself in and who perhaps thought too much of me, beyond my comprehension: I will call them A and B. A started off telling me all his views on women which my rebellious mind was not OK with: no discussion of spiritual or intellectual matters, no mutual sharing though I was expected to remain open; woman in the home, almost commune-like in its “protectiveness.” I remember the phone call in which that relationship shattered when I heard all these new guidelines for friendship… I remember crying and whispering, “what can I talk to you about then?” My soul would have been starved. B, on the other hand, wanted to keep me all to himself and for me to go nowhere by myself. I was expected not to engage in discussions with other males, witnessing a jealousy that scared me. For a while, I thought of the jealous as a desire to protect, and thus I submitted myself more. But the relationship grew more and more controlling as I submitted more: my sin, my sin, my terrible sin. Was that capable of redemption as I continued to encourage the unhealthy dominance through my behavior?

Women retained positive place in poetic and mystical writings, but now “man’s goal is not union with her, but union with God through her” (3) because she became separate from man, no longer symbolizing something within him. Dante’s writing yearned “for harmony, and the harmony he presents as the ideal for himself and all mankind is possible only through women.” (3) Dante’s writing on union with women in order to reach God is spoken through the perspective of his love for Beatrice, who figures Mary, and thus Christ, in Dante’s Comedy. I speculate on the figure of the Virgin Mary: did men manufacture the ideal associated with her historical personhood in order to identify with Jesus? Back to Dante, he was one of the few (though significant) writers of the thirteenth century who wrote encouraging the female side of human nature. I wonder, Jesus; how can I marry a man when I am married to You? I do not understand, when You are all I need, why would I a woman consider allowing that unity to change to be joined with a man? I suppose this was not so much a question in the medieval ages, where the alternative to marriage was a convent, for women posed the possibility of threat to the male ideals: am I still considered a threat to anyone (I am unmarried)?

The female side of human nature seems to find its legitimacy in its ability to embody and personify, that which is within men. 12th Century art and literature fuses male and female characteristics that may be mere gender stereotypicized tendencies, resulting in “a confusion of male and female characteristics in literature and art” (4): heroes and heroines as well as angels are often interchangeable in their gender roles. Jesus, too is not spared from this transgendering tendency, for “Christ is both Logos of the New Testament (masculine) and the Wisdom of the Old Testament (feminine.” (5) “Anima Mundi is another figure of sexual ambiguity; an orthodox concept at best, the Neo-Platonic world soul, always female, was sometimes identified with the Holy Spirit, normally male.” (5) I think figuring the soul as ambiguous gender allows for personal interpretation… maybe our souls mirror or balance our own particular gender: mirroring our own gender or refracting the opposite gender (if any gender at all). “The fact that a human quality or a divine attribute was represented as a woman meant that it must have female characteristics like giving birth or milk, that there was something essentially female.” (6)

Twelfth century men theorized on women in terms of sexual desire (which is a factor far too focused on within all of humanity, I believe)—deeming her more “cold and wet” (signifying a lessened and dampened presence of desire than man) according to Abelard of Bath and Guillame de Conches (6-7). “Since a woman is cold and wet, the fire is hard to start, but burns longer,” (7) Guillame declared, adding to the perceived danger of women to men, trapping him in persistent “sin.” “Guillame insists that the woman produces a seed toward the conception of the child just as a man does,” which seems to me an attempt to redirect the biblical concept of sin traits passed on from the father’s seed. The woman’s “seed is converted blood” (7), whose presence cannot be denied in women, emitted in the onset of desire, but whose presence is supposedly proved through boys’ display of their mother’s traits. This suggests that weakness in women produces sexual desire, even in rape situations, resulting in conception (Guillame makes desire an imperative aspect for conception). Because women were viewed as always giving way to desire, men feared and distrusted them, because desire inevitably resulted in conception.

“Women were often mistrusted by church establishment for their religious fervor as well as seductions, and they were rarely permitted to play important roles after the middle ages.” (8) Thus sects and heresies did appeal to and draw many women by allowing them to have voice, fueling the misconception of women as inherently sinful. Women did, however, have opportunity to play important roles in social life of the middle ages. By the thirteenth century, “a pervasive intellectual constraint” (11) led to decline of positive symbolism of women. “When men cling to orthodoxy and defend the status quo against all attack from outside or from within, they begin to look on all identifiable groups as suspect and dangerous,” (11-12) which I guess targets women and Jesus. Women as a threat were targeted in the late medieval witch-hunt, which “was the product of ‘a world made schizophrenic by masculine anxieties and masculine fears.’” (12) Men already feared the desire of women—because they identified us with lust and sin, but wouldn’t they be some, rather than no, desire? What are men afraid of in us?

The religious shift between 12th and 13th centuries included adopting Gothic rather than Romanesque cathedrals, and changing from symbolism to realistic human figure-representations (12). The figure of Mary and male obsession with her comes to mind. Ferrante says that “it is when men think of desirable qualities as female, even as female impulses within themselves, that they exalt female figures in literature.” (13) Women again picture polar opposites… nuns figuring virtues and townswomen, common women, picturing worldly distractions of men. How can women only be “child-bearers or temptresses” (13)? “In literature before Dante, it is only women writers, as far as I know, who seem to believe that a man can inspire a woman through love in the same way a woman can inspire a man.” (14) Even those who assert “that man and woman can attain divinity through each other’s love” make the female a symbol of and embodiment “for her love the fountain of Wisdom.” (14) From male literary descriptions of females, I am inclined to see more man in men’s presentation of woman than of the woman herself.

Women’s danger “to men’s moral state is introduced into Judeo-Christian tradition with Eve’s temptation of Adam.” (17) Religious writers thought physical beauty allowed women to seduce men from the perfection of thought to the sin of physical matter. Therefore, they viewed women extolled by the Bible as “divested of their human nature by commentators and are made to represent impersonal abstractions like the church.” (17) Male authors found it impossible to deny “the connection of women with the flesh, with matter… partly based on her biological function, her ability to give birth.” (19) I find it interesting that Ferrance compares flesh to the act of circumcision as “a physical feature which denotes a moral state,” (19) the cutting off of which signifies a denial of lust. Salvation was linked to the salvation of men, but women were considered still capable of salvation in spite of being unable to be circumcised. (19) However, eunuchs and virgins were still most highly extolled in religious though because marriage includes “the act of intercourse, which involves the sinful impulse of lust, (and) is morally dangerous to man.” (20) Mary’s perpetual virginity was championed as a glory, enabling her to “be the mother of a living son without intercourse.” (20) Religious literature tended to prefer the idea of immaculate conception because no “sin” was involved propelling to “fleshly” acts.

The common belief of the time, “the mind is the door-keeper of the soul; if it is female, that is given to carnal thoughts, it allows evil to enter,” evidenced male projection of sin tendencies onto women. I wonder when weakness came to mean prone to vice? If women were categorized as such, I would argue that in the weakness, we are more prone to permit solicited vice because it is harder for us to reject sin than sinful tendencies involving men. As base and the fountain of all evil desires, women were viewed as “whores… connected with heresy as well as carnal lust.” (21) As the objects of temptations because of man’s own sinful tendencies, women were made unclean in man’s thoughts because he projected his own weakness upon them. This continues to mystify me, because no matter how purely I have tried to act, how much I have covered myself, the unwanted attention seems inevitable. Being the focus of male attention to my physicality makes me feel unclean. There is no way I can hide from being implicated in fornication within a man’s own thoughts, no matter how much I hide myself; does this mean there is something wrong with me? At list this genre of writing would say so.

Religious writing attempted to trace seduction “to the nature of women, to her tendency to lewd movement and the resulting flowing of her robes.” (21) I almost laughed at this: so does every move a girl makes with an element of grace or in a skirt/dress have to be considered lewd and unclean? Alanus obviously thought so in deeming women “the objects of hedonism.” (22) Even stories of biblical women were twisted to point guilt to women, evidencing them as the root of sin—flesh without intellect. Of the twelfth century religious authors, Abelard had an unusually positive view of women, “emphasizing the greatness of their virtue when it asserts itself despite the weakness.” (24) This perspective continued to advocate the origin of sin as female, but indicated more to her personhood than simply failure. Religious opinion was reflected in rationalizations, such as the teaching that “Christ showed that the female sex is essential to salvation when He chose to assume human body through a woman.” (25) Hence the belief that women truly do achieve eternal salvation through childbearing? I continue to wonder why a male couldn’t be involved in Christ’s conception to result in the sinless savior. The biblical women who are chosen as examples of virtue, are either redeemed from lasciviousness or ever-virgin, like the figure of Mary, representing the Church.

In the same line of thinking, the love of women is always viewed as a secondary sort of love, for “woman is imperfect, hence not the safest object for love.” (27) The biblical bride metaphor of a man completely enraptured with the love of a woman, then, represents the Church’s relationship to Christ. Maybe men created the ideal of the Virgin Mary to express emotion and their own selves in a female figure who is strong and constant against perhaps men’s greatest weakness… opposite of other women, whom men saw as “completely languid, soft, feminine.” (28) “Bernard’s devotion to the Virgin is such that he can identify himself, through her, with a woman’s role and speak of himself as a mother to his monks.” (29) Men have never been able to understand the sense of belonging, which exists between a mother and child—doesn’t God express the same womb-love, sense of belonging for us, as a mother to child? In Song of Songs, “the man’s soul is identified with a woman in its love for God.” (30) This creates a contradiction in imagery, as “Eve was the first woman to fall, but she is also the first to be led out of Hell by Christ: she was guilty of original sin, but she is also a symbol of the church.” (30)

Sin is pictured in conception as the destruction of a woman’s virginity both physically and metaphysically. According to Augustine, in pre-fall conception, “male semen would have entered the woman’s womb without destroying her virginity, as the menses come out.” (31) Marriage does have merits beyond procreation, church fathers advocated, because of the human “need for love, and mutual self esteem.” (31) Yet Augustine and others believed this complementary relationship of the genders improved as sexuality decreased. I wonder if men continue to busy their feelings and desires in women; male friends have told me and other young women that if we intend to never marry, we will break hearts. Do male still see aspiring women as potential embodiments of virtue that they themselves with they could embody? Marriage is far too commonly spiritualized as “the sacrament and image of God to the soul,” (34) first seen in Adam and Eve. So “Eve represents a part of Adam that he must learn to control and use properly, not to reject; he is to achieve the reintegration of the human being and he must accomplish that before he can achieve union with God, the reunion with his creator which is his ultimate goal.” (34-5) Thus to blame women alone for sin is to abdicate man’s role of reflecting God to her. Thus religious through viewed woman as both of part of man, an outward embodiment of himself, as well as a tool to benefit his ascent to God.

The difference between exegetic and allegorical tradition is that exegetic contains stories from which meaning must be derived and in allegory the meaning/form is given and must be constructed into the story (38). The meaning of allegorical stories is found in the degree to which a man allows himself to be controlled by a vice and virtue: “the vices and virtues have a real existence for medieval man and the figures that personify these concepts in literature have more than a metaphoric relation to them.” (39) Have we lost a “belief in the extramental reality of universal concepts persists through the middle ages” (39)? Christians use Neo-Platonism to demonstrate that “matter is the mother who receives the species; providence, the sphere of divine ideas, is the father who supplies the image.” (40) Matter as the prime locus is feminine and passive, receiving the formed-given image by the male. “Creation itself is the wedding of opposites, of matter and idea, body and soul.” (41) Figures in allegory/personifications have female gender “because of an inherent femaleness in the concepts they embody,” (42) thus “in allegory, then, women can be forces for good as well as for evil, they can protect and nourish, not just seduce and destroy.” (42)

In allegory, “marriage… (is) a metaphor for the reconciliation of opposites, as well as the means by which God’s plan is carried out within the moral order.” (43) Man’s goal is “the presence of wisdom, of Christ, in the individual mind, which man can achieve by overcoming the evil in his heart.” (44) Prudentius reverses roles expected of the female virtues and vices “to make a moral point about the relative strength and weakness of vices and virtues.” (45) Human vices, it seems, are more vulnerable than expected. Men continue to puzzle me with Mary. What do men envy about women so as to want to imagine to be as her? “After Mary, all flesh is divine which conceives God, which builds the temple to wisdom in the soul. That is, by overcoming vice, man can bear Christ with his soul; he can become Mary and achieve the highest feat—union with God.” (46)

In allegory, Philosophy teaches “that the soul is imprisoned within the body and can only free itself through learning, that is made in the image of God and can only fulfill itself when it is concerned not with things but with causes.” (49-50) Following in this tradition of masculinizing the women, as seen in Athena as “a masculine goddess, born of a father without a mother.” (52) Interesting that wisdom must bear a sword, but be a woman, a fundamental contradiction. “Through Philosophy, we are told, Jupiter permits anyone to ascend into the heavens.” (53) Bernard equates the quests for knowledge and goodness as the same thing, “but his concern is less with this quest and the union that is its goal, than with the union that produces life.” (54) Through the sexual act, man becomes part of the process of creation, reflecting the image he bears of God in the conception of life (54). Man must maintain his involvement with creation, because “all the agencies of creation in this work (of life) except God the Father, are female.” (55) So is how women achieve salvation through the procreation of life, childbearing? If women are to achieve salvation in a male way, are we to become men to get their same salvation? If we can’t bear children, what is our worth, how do we achieve the working part of salvation?

I remember the days when I was blissfully ignorant of myself, of the effect I had on others, of my own desires, of my own nature and why I tend towards some things more than others. But unfortunately, and fortunately at the same time (which is more true at the moment, I cannot distinguish) I can never fully rid myself of self… self in the “bad” sense… those cursed sin tendencies that will plague me with temptation till the day I die because Adam and Eve plucked and ate that fruit off the tree. Living without realization of the effect this initial disobedience allowed me a blissful aloofness from self, an ability to attach and detach at will, whereas now, confronted with inwardly bent tendencies that I learned so well for so long, I can no longer theoretically divorce from self. I long to please my Jesus, to be like my Jesus, for He has chosen to make His covenant with me—He loved me when I was unable to understand love, a love that did not impose immediate expectation, but gradually wooed me into a compulsory, demanding love that requires all of me in sacrifice to obtain as much of Him as I can handle…really all of Him, because Jesus overwhelms me constantly with His love.

Before I began to allow myself to experience the tender love of Jesus, I was under the impressions that love was miserable: something with unrealistically high expectations that would always leave me, the beloved, owing my lover something… something so much that even if I committed the gravest sin out of that love, gave up everything I am and have, I would be unable to repay the love I thought existed. My perception of Jesus was that He defined love as a place I would reach with Him once He had scourged out of my imperfections… that I would be unable to enjoy Him until I was perfect. It has only been in this past year that I have begun to discover what the Bible really says about uprightness: David was considered a man after God’s own heart and loved/deemed upright in spite of himself because his heart remained sensitive to God even if he continued to fall to temptations. I have always had a chip on my shoulder on the Protestant teaching of salvation by faith alone… grace covering everything, because I have seen human nature take advantage of those teachings and excuse sin theologically (almost making it Jesus’ own fault by complaining “O Jesus, You just shouldn’t give me so much grace because then I couldn’t sin.”). Of course, I say that to Jesus and mean it entirely differently… I find myself always coming back to the cross and at times wishing it was me instead of Him.

Jesus and I have wrestled over my desire for Him, because I love Him so much, He truly is irresistible, and like the prophet Jeremiah who experience relationship with God in very intense and difficult situations, I think I would rather have God in whatever form He chooses to manifest Himself than no God at all. Yet I never find myself acting worthily enough to enter His presence. It’s like a death-wish, wanting to see the face of my God, my Jesus… “bright-shining as the sun” sounds like I would evaporate before wholly in His presence. It’s beyond the physical though, because since I have committed to loving my Jesus, I have also committed to living a holy life, that impossible standard set by Jesus to which I attain. Perfection doesn’t seem to spell out my name, though. Like David, every time I have been made upright, I make the same decision again, and have the humiliating task of confession that I once again failed my Jesus in the way I rashly had vowed I never would again. More responsibility for my sin, but grace as well. Grace in that there is always an opportunity to make a decision that is beyond me.

I used to think that the Christian life was something that made me victorious… like somehow when Jesus entered into me, He put all those fabulous perfections in me and made me better than I had been. I used to think Jesus was going to make me strong—now I think Jesus has become my strength, the light and joy of my salvation. How can I understand Jesus as coming to make the self in me strong, if that just tears away from His purpose? I am a human being, there is nothing in me that can approach the Father on my own, because I have these Achilles heals… fatal flaws, which draw me because they are alike me. I have been learning what it means for my strength to be my weaknesses and my weaknesses to be my strengths this semester. I find those parts of me that Jesus works in, that maybe He’s gifted me in, that I naturally excel in are most frequently the points of my downfall. For example, in learning what it means to love people, I am finding out about myself that I can love people very easily. In that, I want to see all people love each other… forget the differences that don’t matter, and as a united body extend the hands of Jesus to the world. In that, I trust too easily, too much and often overlook differences that may really matter for the sake of unity.

To use perhaps a rather disturbing metaphor, I find myself married to Jesus, but continuing an affair with an old lover from my sinful days, one whom I never married because then marriage wasn’t in my vocabulary, but we certainly lived together long enough for this ex-lover to know everything about me, what draws and attracts me, what I hate, how to keep me around and coming back… how to reach the very core of my heart. Jesus said that no man can love two masters…. But I find myself caught with both: I love how Jesus transforms me, life is so different when I am with Him… but oh what an unpleasant road He calls me too! Then self, my dead lover, is so natural, we fit so well together and it always offers the most appealing answers… just what I want to hear. But oh the guilt as I look at my watch and realize this lover has just consumed and warped what should have been given to my Jesus…I weep, but it is too late, my momentary indulgence has already conceived sin, and now I am plagued by guilt and shame… I feel I cannot go back to Jesus now. But self is only abusive, tries to cover the guilt, work the sin out of me, and as each moment passes, the sin is more and more full-grown in my selfishness. Once sin is born, I feel obligated to self, though sin is a hateful child… and my own desires have produced distance between Jesus and me. Yet Jesus comes to me and tells me that self does not have to be alive, the selfish desires which I find in myself do not have to bring forth a life of sin—He will take them and work in me, in spite of me, if I will only submit my will to Him.

Jesus promises to be strong in me, if I will let Him. But how often do I deny that, deny that what I am experiencing in my emotions, an almost overpowering desire that rivals the will to obey, is sin, and I try to justify it in Jesus? When I fail, I find I am unable to do right on my own, still, because I am still weak and powerless without Jesus. And then at times, then guilt makes me doubt whether or not I can ever make the right decision. I was reading Philippians from a different translation than I am used to, the New Living Translation, and was struck by 2.12b and 13: “Work hard to show the results of your salvation, obeying God with deep reverence and fear. For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases Him.” Jesus offers me a freedom from all the sin, if I will confess, repent, and relinquish the overburdening guilt. Will I as a woman be willing to abandon my attractive lover in order to just love Jesus? Why do I cling to those sin tendencies when I don’t have to and permit the guilt? Maybe allowing the guilt is sin tendency in and of itself, because I am voluntarily subjugating myself to something that gives me a task—and for me that makes the world so much easier—to be commissioned with something that makes me feel like I can be worthy of grace.

I have been reading a lot lately in a variety of fields about the female nature, so maybe this reluctance I have to accept grace only is that existential guilt factor we women wrestle with that men do not. The only reason I can identify that factor is because I have experienced it in my own life and witnessed it in the lives of other women… it seems a nearly universal stigma to female personhood. I was encouraged yesterday evening, having a hearty three-hour conversation with my friend and boss over this past year, that existential guilt of women is not a figment of my imagination.

So I look at this guilt which seems to accompany every sin I do in my relationship with Jesus, just because He really is so wonderful: I think of it as conscious guilt, something I know is wrong or guilt that weighs so heavily in my conscience that it begins to affect the rest of my life in tangible (or existential/perceivable) ways. I start behaving certain ways and performing certain actions to try and rid my conscience of the guilt. Here emerges my resistance to grace, because once I feel the guilt, and begin doing something to try and eliminate it, I resist the notion that guilt can be removed by something so simple as forgiveness. My faith wants a penance, maybe not to prove to God, but to prove to myself that I am really free. I have noticed from readings by different women as well as discussion that this guilt is very prevalent among women and because of it, we try and take on others’ guilt. All of this happens very naturally; perhaps we assume responsibility for the wrongs done to us, blaming ourselves as the cause of others’ actions, which can lead to over submission, equitable with enablement. I read an interesting book called Women Who Love too Much, discussing the desperate measures women would go to in voluntary subjugation in order to feel loved and relieve their own perceptions of guilt. If one adds Jesus to the mix, you start thinking that your sinful desires in selfishly wanting to change that person in order to interact with them on your terms is making you a crucifixion victim—suffering for Christ, leading to death by abuse (emotional if not physical). Existential guilt affects us even beyond our interactions with Jesus in terms of our sin tendencies or with other individuals… it affects the very core of at least the female nature. I find myself compelled and driven by emotions to natural acts which go directly contrary to godly conduct for me life.

I am caught then, between two fatal attractions: to the self, my soul will perish because it will never cease to be abused, will continually produce sin, and never be satisfied with guilt status. With Jesus, I am completely in love, yet so easily pulled away by very natural inclinations because the life I am called to with Jesus is not so natural: self-denial and crucifixion? Love in the face of hate? Love and give without return? But I would still desire to be near to Jesus, so I must learn this self-denial and just consider the ex-lover dead. May I not be a stumbling block to others’ faith either, one of those seductresses in proverbs who causes men to fall into sin, but may the Jesus in me truly be a blessing.

Thoughts on: Economic Facts and Fallacies, Chptr. 3: Male-Female Facts and Fallacies by Thomas Sowell

So as I quest through the different realms of male and female, I find myself confronted with socio-economic obstacles in femininity, which seem to be common female concerns. In fact, our femininity is the very problem of this whole work force equality. Every obstacle women have been presented with in regards to occupation (I suppose the chapter I read was dealing with equality in pay), even historically, boils down to pregnancy, so says Sowell: a pregnant woman is “less a woman” in the work force because they are less able. So all the stuff about not sending women into the work force was precaution against sexual exploitation and unwanted pregnancy? Were equality movements such as equal rights and feminist movements just attempts to even the scales between men and women, scales which I feel cannot be reconciled because of some undeniably fundamental nature differences, such as the female ability to bear children, produce life?

It has been claimed that females have been underpaid in comparison to the work of males is not a disputed fact, but rather the explanation of this fact. Such disparity, Sowell suggests, might be due to differences in: upbringing, skills, education, and career choices. Women haven’t always been given the opportunities of men, or even considered equals with men (from previous comments on articles, I as a woman have been considered an “honorary human”) and for me, looking at the female question of occupation and acquiring a livelihood resurrects the question of risk and sexuality: somehow we women have been the representatives and bearers of our family’s shame, maybe honor too in the bearing of children? If honor has been forgotten and motherhood desecrated from its sacred office, dare I say its holy order, have we too forgotten shame in today’s American culture? I would boldly venture a yes, just watching the evolution of current society. We women have chosen to either encourage the organization of this world as a man’s world, or we attempt to force the men to abdicate in order to get female power (forgive me for being terrified by such a though).

So we live in a culture of lessening discrimination between men and women, affecting the pay disparity between incomes. Sowell notes that this evolution of the equality of the female being as a productive, contributing member to society (as defined by culture omitting the factor of motherhood… thus one must be a mother + something else or just not a mother…which denies some fundamental maternal desire within women, I might add) that encouraged pay disparity over time is due to: the feminist movement, pressure of government, and “general increase in enlightenment.” (55) Now, Sowell notes (and I ponder if this were also true of the past), women embody both extremes of humanity: while two-thirds of the illiterate populations are women, some of the world’s most educated people are also women. I am struck again by the contradiction we women embody socially as vessels of honor and shame; even if that acknowledgement is denied to us by current society, we internally know it is true… thus we struggle with existential guilt that does not belong to us, nor is confessed in public (because it is shameful). What society wants to admit its women are the buffers, its scapegoats (of course we also place ourselves in those positions.).

Sowell states, somewhat in paradoxical comparison that “women are walking off with a disproportionate share of degrees” (56) He states further that this current predominance of women in the realms of academia and therefore the upper-level work force are both quantitatively and qualitatively rivaling male standards. I think my professors would tend to attest to this, and sadly, I have noticed an overall immaturity about the males that need not be present in my fellow female students. Unfortunately, we women are all too willing to sell ourselves short to be amongst those men: what is it with this loneliness factor, can we not be alone without feeling half a being? Why do we continue to buy lies and common beliefs that we are not whole unless married? Such a belief becomes less and less common, but I know two years ago, I believed it whole-heartedly, and dared not aspire beyond. My imagination needed to be recreated to picture the freeing Jesus who has made me equal, yet not equal, with my brothers in Christ.

As mentioned, today’s society does not have nearly the archaic sorts of discriminations between genders, restricting women’s labor. There are, however, facts of my femininity that can never be fundamentally denies and may always be a separating factor on the pay scale: physical strength. We women may be touch and durable, but there is a delicacy in our durability that typically constrains itself to will. I remember when I was much younger physically disciplining myself to a far greater extent than my male athlete comrades, but they were always able to out-do my best attempts. Physicality in terms of strength may not matter so much anymore, though, because of “the replacement of human muscle by machine power in our own times has reduced the importance of physical strength that it may be difficult to see how important the factor was in centuries past (57). If one’s survival depended on being the fittest and strongest, I understand the preference of most men over most women. Because of technology, not only is physical strength not as predominant a separating factor, but age and gender no longer play as hefty a class-casting role as in previous centuries. Child-bearing remains one of the sole physical factors… and all the complications attached to that part of female nature, which separates men and women in the work force.

There have always been major economic consequences to women’s ability to bear children. As mentioned in passing on shame and honor, motherhood seems to be considered another function of womanhood, now, rather than a role in the female nature. As a function, women find ourselves in competition between domestic and occupational responsibilities, tending “to fall furthest behind in income” beneath those who are able to work more (57). Educational opportunities have added to this conflict; if one really wants to live a simple, “idealistic” lifestyle and is willing to cheat herself out of the possibility of a freer life. I must confess at one point in life, I toyed with my own desire for further education, because I realized it would complicate those innate maternal female desires. For the first two decades of this century, the proportion of women in the academic world increased “before either anti-discrimination laws or the feminist movement.” (58) Yet these increases appear to have declines by 1950s and 60, suggesting, “that what changed over these decades was not discrimination but women’s marriage and child-bearing patterns.” (59)

Sowell fascinates me in his confession of the women’s responsibility for their society as it really is…. Does he know what he’s doing? Reading the last phrase of the paragraph above, I find that maybe our situations don’t change and never do, but we can rise above the circumstances. As women continues in their assumptions of higher-level occupations, the marrying age also increased. Because of this, Sowell notes (60) that the birth rate “fell sharply and was much lower at the end of the century that it was at the beginning.” I find it remarkable how much the changes in women’s marrying ages and conceptual ages differ and affect so much of their possibility in society. “The distribution of women and men in various occupations has long differed, partly due to restrictions placed on women and partly due to choices made by the women themselves.” (61) There we go again, voluntary subjugation: we women choose to be beneath, beneath even unhealthily in a way we do not deserve?

Sowell launched into what I found to be a fascinating explanation of the restrictions placed on women in the workforce—a lot of which has legitimate value, but maybe overly conservative and rigid application: In the past where “chastity was a prerequisite for favorable marriage prospects,” a young woman was prohibited from work that would make allotment for “unsupervised contact with young men” (62) for fear that she would be taken advantage of sexually or consent to illicit desire. Sowell notes that young men have never had the possibility of female difficulties, “anything so visible or with so much social and economic impact as becoming pregnant.” (63) Therefore, men were freer, always, in their lines of works, for their risks and gambles were quite different from those of a woman. Sowell recounts that before the industrial era, wealthy and reputable families were “able to attract live-in maids either because the supervision or the reputation of these particular families were considered to be of some assurance of lower risks of sexual misconduct” or because the families were so poor they had no choice (63). Such considerations affect my perspective on the constraints of female occupations: for protection rather than detriment?

It’s interesting to see just how much families were concerned about their daughter’s inability to work because of employer sexual misconduct throughout all of a woman’s struggles for work. Fathers no longer have such a role in their daughter’s lives… decisions such as limitation for protection are now viewed as inequality and bias rather than real love. However, Sowell asserts that employers did not focus on sexual misconduct in segregating women from some types of work. Physical strength being no longer a significant separation factor in most occupations, accounting for one the “external limitations places on the range of occupations” open to women. Women tend to make career choices influences by the likelihood that they would at some point become mothers.” (65) Children have been a huge factor in “interruptions in the labor force participation” of women, which accounts for some for some of the disparaging treatment between the genders (66-67).

“With women more often then men carrying the burden of domestic responsibilities for children and the care of the home, careers that involve much unpredictable night and day work are less attractive to women.” (68) Upon first read of that portion of the book, I thought “are less attractive to women” read “produce less attractive women…” referring to the exhausting sporadic schedule that develops. While a woman may ream of “having it all—a career and a family and an upscale life—is fine, but doing it all is often harder for a woman, given the usual division of domestic responsibilities between the sexes and the inevitable differences in childbearing.” (68) Women really are disadvantaged in the work force in comparison to men because of the physical limitations of pregnancy. This is seen in the fact that “women who have graduated form top-level universities like Harvard, Yale have not worked full-time, or worked at all, to the same extent that male graduates of these institutes have.” (70)

In domestic situations where men are the sole income earners (even in typical working-class America), the situations “have been described as ‘male-dominated societies.’” (72) How can one reconfigure the presentation of headship so as not to pose the threat of domination? One runs into further difficult with women in work: “because the situations of husbands and wives have not been symmetrical in traditional families, it is likewise not surprising that marriage has had opposite effects on the incomes of men and women.” (72) Studies show that women who are not married and without children have higher incomes then those who are unmarried and have no children. “Traditional” wives invested so much of themselves in their husbands’ careers that divorce, even if warranted by other factors, that they remain in the marriage or relationship, for a separation/divorce “would mean a loss of that investment.” (73) What sort of loss? Is this a selfish reason for voluntary subjugation (not that I am endorsing any sort of divorce theology at all)?

Sowell notes that even with all the feminine obstacles to working, “people who discriminate against girls when it comes to education pay no price for that but employers who discriminate against women workers do.” (73) It is very challenging to find comparable grounds on which to analyze men and women… unlike other distinguishing differences such as ethnicity and race. The effect of the education experience and race experience “can have opposite effects on men and women… marriage and parenthood tend to lead to increased incomes for men and reduced incomes for women. So what was this about marriage affecting life and domestic asymmetrical arrangements. My question arises, are non-married, never-been-married individual women affected by the sex differences in income?

Of never-married people, women tend to earn more than men: “academic women who never married earn more than academic men who never married.” (77) There is an obvious “pattern of negative correlation between marital responsibilities (including children) and women’s educational levels and career advancement” (77) which emerges from the information Sowell presents. Of men and women who were comparable in occupation, industry, and other such variables, there was not much difference of income, Sowell claims. Perhaps, I suggest again, the men are no longer advocates of female submission struggles… but rather participants as women continue to subject themselves to such a life. So what do we make of such notions as “the ‘glass ceiling’ restricting how high women are allowed to rise, especially in top management position” (80)? Sowell notes that “much depends on whether the social goal should be equal opportunity or equal income” (85) between men and women.

Concluding on such a note, we women are faced with a decision: opportunity or income? We know from our very natures, that we are not able to do all things men can do and we can hardly do things in the same manner they do. But some shared occupations and aspirations we excel over men in. I think I advocate equal opportunity as far as gender allows… but perhaps the equal income question is different: if men and women do not work the same way, how do we set a standard of accurate measurement when the scales weigh so differently? Questions as to the discarded image of shame and honor once attributed to women and not subversively assumed into womanhood arise. This ability to produce life out of ourselves continues to fascinate me: it grows within us, and enables us and disables us. So what of those women unable to bear children; more androgynous and capable of male roles than the typical female?

“Take this, all of you, and drink from it: this is my blood which was poured out for you.”
You stand there Jesus, and Your hands are reaching up towards Your Father who is in Heaven. I don’t understand it, why You would take the cup for me. We both know its contents… those flakes of gold from the calf idol Moses ground into powder still swirl about in this deadly swill. You have turned the water into blood, rather than wine, because it is the fluid of life: but one sip of this cup, and perhaps all the life will flee out of me. Why would You do it, Jesus? You are not compelled to death by hemlock through any sins You have done, any offenses You have committed… because there are none to be found under Your name. Yet, You are still reaching into Heaven, and I think You are holding a chalice.

Or maybe it’s a star; the holy grail? Something bright and shining beyond the tolerance of my eyes half emerges out of Heaven: it’s alive and burning in Your hands. I think I have stepped back into time for a few moments… because are You whispering something, are Your hands burning around that cup, are those tears in Your eyes and blood on Your brow? You bid the Father to take this cup from You, but not Your will, of course not, You voluntarily submit Yourself to my painful torment. Isaiah couldn’t bear a burning coal on his tongue without it consuming obvious sins. Jesus, You had none to consume, You were Holy in man nature… were You still burned or did it consume You?

I think I see, now, whats really in that cup: not dust or water, wine or blood, but words, a fountain of words—angry and sad, disappointed, just, Holy… words of the wrath of the Lord: this is that scared vessel which will be divided into seven bowls and poured over the earth in its final days. And here You stand, Jesus my Savior, holding up this burning cup within Your hands. Its awful to watch, I don’t understand how such a man as You could take my rightful cup and love me still. Jesus, put it down, don’t drink from it, I am not worthy. You hear the cry of my heart… You see my distress and unsurity. My sin offering, Jesus, I love You, why are You doing this for me? How can You love me too, like this?

I see You standing now, You’re glowing like the grail… did my tears blind my eyes, did I miss something? There are still words within the cup, but they are dissolving into the blood that You poured in. Blood, blood, so much blood from Your hands, feet, side, and head. Your wounds are fresh and open still… how long has it been, 3 days? But no more life must flow out of You, no more blood is there to be spilt. You wounded Yourself for my transgression and iniquity; the wounds which perfected Your soul and made You immortal brought me peace. So why do I languish under torment? Why is there no peace or rest within my soul? Jesus, You are offering the cup back to me… wrath, Jesus, didn’t You bear all the wrath?

Your smile reassures me, I pray I am not deceived. It’s a bitter cup I drink from…I can find no sweetness in it. You continue to smile, there’s more still. I cannot drink such a full cup, I must stop for some time… Jesus, help me drink of You… for You are the fountain of life… must I too die to taste Your sweetness?

Response to: The Risks of Repeating Ourselves: Reading Feminist, Womanist Figures of Jesus. By Karen Timble Alliaume

Over the past year and a half of my final time studying for my undergraduate degree, I have begun to question more specifically God’s use of women in occupational roles/positions. We have in the past gender-specified certain occupations, tasks, etc… and with the occupation I find myself identifying seems to fall into that predominantly male category of collegiate teaching, and in the even more forbidden territory of religious education. I want to teach theology and philosophy on a collegiate level, and involving God in that already-bold ambition of teaching young men has been questioned. What would I give up to teach? The conservative feminine ideal: husband and family (at least for now) because of an almost fanatical, over-ambitious drive at teaching. Probably far too intense, but I love the stuff I study… I converse with authors far too regularly, and am learning how to integrate what I learn into life. Jesus and I have a simple relationship that grows more complex as I experience more… as Jesus matures me into a woman He has married rather than a little girl He may be fond of. He wants me to be able to love Him back just as much as He loves me… and I struggle with that, because somewhere in the picture, that means being like my Jesus. Be like You, Jesus? But You are not a woman, I am not a man, how can I fully live like You? Thus I explore the feminist concepts of Jesus to see how far I can push into “men’s world” and remain a true woman in Your image.

Because these women are feminists that I am reading to obtain one polar perspective on women and Jesus, I have to keep in mind that part of their fundamental belief system defies patriarchal anything; any system that is organized with a man as head of a woman. Feminists in their true form, I think, dwell far too much in the past, assigning blame to men for the suppression of women. And of course, there is plenty of blame to be had there, in the past… but the more I read, the more I am think the feminists are playing the Eden game again… tag, men are “it” for the blame! The more I read, the more I am inspired and my imagination runs wild… but I think feminism need to realize the fundamental stupidity of women. “Maleness” has a bad taste in the mouths of feminists who see manhood as the cause of female oppression, omitting the female sin tendency to over-submit. “Your desire shall be for your husband and he will rule over you” (Genesis 3.16) evidences an innate female sin tendency to voluntarily subject herself to the whims and desires of others.

I think feminism denies something inherently female in our nature.. the sin tendencies: it acknowledges difference between make and female, but those difference remain unclear as feminists try to achieve “equality” for women. But equality of value does not necessarily imply same/like position, which feminism wants to attain: same roles and value. I think we women often forget our own nature, and do look to male nature as the “norm” for how we should be… though even in reality, we cannot make our natures anymore male than they can make theirs female. We are incapable, most of us, of performing “male-ly” in most given tasks because not only are my not built as men physiologically, we are not metaphysically built as men either.

This I find myself identifying with Alliaume,“McLaughlin’s own yearning for the answer to her question ‘How can I a woman, find myself, see myself as made in the image of a male God, a God whose human face is seen in the man Jesus?’ (140)” But the more preposterous solution cannot be so simple as McLaughlin proposes: “to ‘re-dress’ the problem of Jesus’ maleness by reading him as a transvestite, as one who shatters the opposed duality of male/female.” Jesus really did more than dress-up in flesh, though… He took on human nature (hypostatic union theology?). This proposition seems to have been given in response to Jesus’ apparently unmasculine behavior: “Jesus’ behavior is anxiety-provoking; he behaves in a manner inconsistent with our expectations of him as a man.” When did we ever assign gender to behavior? I guess Jesus’ avoidance of a gender-stereotype label makes Him frustrating to identify with. Why can we not just accept Jesus for who He tells us He is? Who He demonstrates to us He is? Why must we identify what He is to identify ourselves with Him? I think Jesus tried to picture humanity rather than a gender.

I guess we “dress” Jesus with gender-specific qualities so as to know how to emotionally engage Him. Do I want to emotionally engage Jesus like Alliaume? Is it a choice I have or something I just do, especially as a woman? Emotionally identify with Jesus? Jesus, do you feel as I feel, are you broken like me? Do I not engage emotions, distance myself from them because I don’t see You in them? All of me to all of You Jesus, please.  Alliaume points out an interesting confliction in how we view Jesus: “Christians believe in a Jesus ‘dressed’ in flesh, that most female of symbols, and they believe in a God in man-flesh who behaves like a woman.” I wondered at first how flesh was a female symbol, but if it is thought of in terms of Greek thought… separating us from the forms, true stuff, spirit, then flesh is evil, which would further explain to me that imputation of sin/guilt of all humanity onto women. (I tangent in my thought to make note to try and find the origin of existential guilt, since its presence is undeniable) We cannot make Jesus into a woman… but can we make a woman into Jesus? Can one be done but not the other? This “transvestite Jesus” is McLaughlin’s christologically playful attempt to shock her congregation, is seems.

“McLaughlin’s yearning, and mine (so speaks Alliaume), to see ourselves made in the image of a male God is a yearning to be recognized, as women, as capable of representing divinity; a recognition that is not made available to us in the conventional manner.” I need to find a way to convince/persuade women that they need to do this. That we women need to identify with Jesus, our living sacrifice, we need an emotional connection, to realize Jesus in all parts of our lives, including those emotions, which are beyond my comprehension. Since women are typically considered very emotional human beings, what if one does not engage her emotions or even find them within herself as typically defined femininity prescribes? Is she then any less a woman in the same way that feminists want to consider Jesus not really masculine because of His behavior? Again, who dictates the standard of gender-specific behavior? Society, surely. Yet we live in society, and so must work within the socially acceptable definitions of male and female in pursuit of a more Jesus-like life.

For Alliaume, this Jesus-like life and identification require an understanding of Jesus as a man being different, fundamentally speaking, from women. Alliaume does not delve into the differences of nature and personhood based on gender, which I acknowledge, but at least begins with anatomical differences. Alliaume desires to picture what Jesus would look like in the person of a woman, something she terms as “citing” Jesus: “To ‘cite’ Jesus with one’s body refers to what appears to be a preexistent relationship on congruity between Jesus and a woman, a relationship that is actually created in that citation.” So with this whole identification through citation or picturing (the world sacrament as living picture comes to mind)… does it deepen an existing relationship, create a whole new form of relationship? Unimaginable? Why bother trying to “cite” Jesus as a woman if men do not do so as well? There is a need for men to “cite” Jesus, because the typical man illegitimately represents Jesus in his definition of maleness (why do we more often call Him the Christ then Jesus… sounds so distant, so masculine, identifying my Jesus by what He’s done. He’s more than that though) similarly to “illegitimate congruencies of women’s bodies and practice with Jesus’ body and practice.”

“Some Christian feminist theologians, finding orthodox figurations of Jesus’ significance irredeemably harmful to women, determine Christianity itself irredeemable for women” (maybe the male/typical Christianity?) How does the person of Jesus pose an oppressive figure? I look at my Jesus in the Bible and I cannot imagine how He could be oppressive even as a slave master. Feminism , I think, identifies “maleness” by the male sin tendencies, which historically have been asserted through oppression, domineering over sinful women who tend to want to over submit themselves. Feminism seeks to balance these natures of men and women, but we will never be on a level playing field, and Jesus cannot be thought of as oppressive simply because of historical male sin tendencies. I wonder how much a passive man would be judged as oppressive by the very maleness within him? “We have trouble with Jesus’ maleness because the Christian ‘convention’ of Jesus becoming human in a male body has not seemed to ‘cover’ women, has not seemed to fulfill the Athanasian adage that ‘what is not taken up is not redeemed.’”

If one accepts male headship, then of course Jesus covers women, because somehow Paul thought we needed that. What does feminism think of male headship? Probably that male sin tendency has disabled it and it is no longer desirable. So I am going to play in feminist thought for a little bit, imagine according to experience that all I knew of male nature was the indulged sin tendencies it has, then of course a male Jesus would seem bad and unredemptive; I would join Alliaume in stating, “The figure of Jesus has not ‘worked for us because the continual citations of him as Lord, king, Son have not figured in Jesus that we recognize as redemptive.” Beyond that cry of feminism for relief from a male presence which cannot be so bad as they allow (I almost want to assert that we women tend to let ourselves be taken advantage of in the initial naïveté of our natures, and our tendencies to assume guilt for sins that are not ours. We are easy, willing scapegoats, are we not?). As a woman, though, if I am told to live like Jesus that is what I want to do, fully in my womanly nature and self. Thus I concur, “the ‘reality’ of Jesus lies in the extent to which figurations and stories of Jesus constitute us and our lives.”

McLaughlin’s “transvestite Jesus” is an attempt to figure Jesus into a person acceptable to the feminist who over generalizes maleness in regards to women as being full of those terrifying sin tendencies. The “transvestite Jesus” utilizes unconventional actions of women, which did not depict typical acceptance of femininity. These are “gender-bending actions by female martyrs and saints, and looks forward to further reformulations and inhabitations of a cross-dressing Christic body.” Feminists have far too much a problem with Jesus’ maleness as an inhibiting factor to their identification with Him (though I have like concerns at times), and pose two solutions to this problem of maleness: a post-Christian abandonment of the name of Jesus, retaining only the example of His life, or those who are committed to Jesus as the most promising figure, but can’t accept Him as they first encountered Him (in His male nature, seemingly oppressive), and so attempt to reinvent His example. So how does this Jesus, who came as a man, undeniably and unmistakable, save women?

I wonder what we women want in a savior? I suppose we need some sort of identification to say our sins died with Him… we need someone that feminine spirit of ours can align ourselves to, someone to mimic even our gender-specific behavior after. After all, what do we do with those distinctly female awkward functions? There must be some identification for even our physiological/anatomical differences within Jesus. I have attempted at least one that used to be a separation factor with God, which rendered us as women physically weaker than men, but gave us a great value as the bearers of life: we lose blood differently than men. Jesus gave life through the losing of His blood, and I suppose in a way, we women do also. Can we any more deny our femininity positionally in our striving after traditionally “male” occupations and roles than we can those differences in anatomy that separate us? And yet somehow in our very difference from men, we find value through the complementing aspects of our female personhood. So how is Jesus, who came as a man, redemptive for a woman? “Jesus’ redemptive power lies ultimately in this ideal humanity, not in his maleness, nor in a spurious identification of him with the transcendent Greek Logos. His maleness is significant insofar as he renounces the privileges that accompany it.” What sort of privilege did Jesus set aside to be redemptive to the whole community, men and women, as well as provide embodiment for the whole community of Himself? I suppose we in our complementary natures need each others’ differing abilities to embody Jesus in our communal interactions.

Rosemary Radford Ruether describes Christ’s redemption as portrayed through the community of Christ who continues to embody Him, extend His identity and ideals. If this is true, “we can now encounter Christ even ‘in the form of our sister’.” If “the prototypical ‘human’ is male, while the female has always been seen as lesser than or other to full male humanity,” then the feminine status as “honorary human” must be harder to redeem than that of the typical male. Jesus came as a male, yet McLaughlin says He divested Himself of the male privilege that accompanied His gender, for she “figured Jesus’ maleness in terms if its absence.” What is the privilege exactly that Jesus forfeits? Jesus made Himself nothing, Philippians 2 tells us, taking on the nature of a servant: this reminds me of what Hopkins noted about the evolution of the ministerial position of ministers. In ancient patriarchal society, the servile positions were given to women, and now ministers are being expected to hold such positions, rendering ministers today more feminine, according to Hopkins. Again, I question how we assigned behaviors to genders. I completely agree that Jesus emptied Himself of His Godness and associated privileges in becoming human, but did He divest His humanity of anything? Isaiah 53-like description rings through the mind, for Jesus was despised and rejected; He did take on the lowest form of humanity… that of a slave or a servant… is this the way we try and see Jesus as “womanly”?

Its interesting that Jesus on a one-on-one level seemed very egalitarian but He was not revolting against the patriarchal community on that sort of a level, but in relationship. Alliaume quotes Sojourner Truth, one of those strong women who defies gender stereotypes, thus figuring Jesus, “Jesus was made by God and a women; man had nothing to do with Him.” Such seems an attempt to define Jesus by too exclusively feminine overtones—there needs to be room in Jesus for male identification too, and often I feel that feminist Christology in extreme forms attempts to exclude Jesus to women. One must wonder, if Jesus was made without the presence of a man, thus somehow without that fatherly passing on of something to do with sin (one might be able to argue about sin nature here, but that can be dealt with at a later point), did Jesus’ solely human maternity and divine paternity affect His bio-chemical make-up? The crucified, suffering Jesus obviously is too passive for men, but is He too much for women too?

Alliaume thinks that “Haraway is right that Jesus as incarnation of the ‘suffering servant’ is too easily subsumed back into the Christian patriarchal narrative of supersessionism, and I would add, the valorization of feminine sacrifice.” Thus the crucified Jesus has been deemed by feminist Christology as an unfit role model for women, and the men have already rejected Him. What are we looking for in our Jesus, then? What sort of sign or wonder would the Jesus Christianity exalts in theology have to perform in order to provide a life fit for modeling if neither gender will assume Him as a role model? Yet I have met women who have been told that in order to be obedient to God, they must assume the role of Christ as the silent, suffering servant… in obedience to the man/husband who assumes the role of God. I too at different points of my life submitted willingly when perhaps the more Jesus-like thing to do would not be submission. We cannot allow for abuse between man/wife in the assumption of roles; man cannot play the part of God over Jesus in the crucifixion, though the human unity of man and wife is supposed to picture the oneness of the Father and Son—albeit, marriage continues to pose and incomplete picture. Indeed, God’s abuse is different from man’s (if we want to use that terminology), for we cannot “abuse well” (morbid joke); human abuse is always selfish. And yet we women continue to try and love and subject ourselves to such enablement because we don’t know how else to love Jesus. We think we’re supposed to… and so until we can no longer tolerate such an understanding of Jesus, perhaps our overly trusting senses and desire to belong, be needed cause us to submit ourselves to abuse. Do we understand our Jesus through such abuse? Maybe the Father out of love for us abused Jesus, but human abuse cannot be from anything but selfishness.

So in order to prevent women from succumbing to the masochistically seductive temptation for women to voluntarily subject themselves to abuse, which is pictured as Christ-like, Alliaume attempts to find another model of behavior. Sojourner Truth is looked at as “a paradoxical figure for ‘humanity’” because of her strength of personhood in spite of being not only a woman, who were considered honorary humans, but also a black woman who was considered nothing at all. Of course it is obvious that Truth is a woman, but somehow she is significant beyond the bounds of womanhood itself, and into the area of humanity in general. Haraway uses the figure of Truth to evidence that gender and race matter in identification with Jesus, because they constrain humanity. Of course to Jesus, race is insignificant, as is gender, but we sinful, selfish humans limit the work of His grace socially between gender and ethnicity. Haraway, along with fellow feminist Fiorenza, attempt to identify “certain ‘Jesus stereotypes,’ to figure theoretical/ theological subject positions for women that do not rehearse the dangerously worn-out conventions of ‘humanity,’ but instead seek to honor differences among men and women in different social locations.” Feminist theologians are tired of righting womanly abuse of the crucifixion, and are searching for a new identity in Jesus. He was resurrected, right? Perhaps feminist christologies tend to miss the further purposes of Jesus’ life and death: to bring us to life (1 Peter 3.18).

“Feminists use two strategies, abandonment and unmasking, in resisting the effects of orthodox Christological formulations,” which feminists tend to feel suppress women into a cross beneath the angry, berating of men and male authority. Feminist theology wants to cling to Jesus in Christianity without allowing for the possibility of abuse within His personhood. Jesus doesn’t need to be a third alternative… He can be a male Jesus and provide salvation for women if we want to play around with that whole idea of Jesus denying the stereotypical male privilege. Perhaps Jesus did deny the social benefits afforded to His masculine nature by hanging around with prostitutes, tax collectors, and sinners, but even more than this, Jesus fundamentally denied and conquered the male domineering sin tendency. I wonder, does this mean Jesus was tempted with male versions of every sin (since He was tempted in all manners as we are), or did He face female temptations as well? Feministis like Fiorenza reconcile the maleness of Jesus with the necessary redemptive covering for womanhood by viewing Him as a paradoxical representation of womanhood in male form, “a figure for a reimagined feminist theological practice” as well as a figure that slyly/deceptively sinks into present christologies, exposing their “hierarchal interests” to reform the identity of Christianity. I guess Jesus needed a face-lift from what we have done with Him; we need to redeem the person of our Redeemer from the

My mind keeps wandering back to these origins of these explorative attempts with Jesus’ gender: We try and make Jesus into what He is not, something more than He is; we want more miraculous signs and wonders that He can cover our gender-particular needs and temptations. Perhaps we are not looking for re-incarnated persons of Jesus, but in the over-the-top feminism movement, we are shamefully stripping the person of Jesus of the nature He assumed, masculine devoid of sin, in order to invent our own signs and wonders: feminine versions of Jesus. Somewhere, we need to understand a line between female configuration of the person and work of Jesus and making Jesus into a woman or an un-man. Jesus did in fact die, and our continual sign and wonder to evoke remembrance of that sacrifice and the life we live because of it is embedded in the Eucharist. Jesus’ last act was to promise us the wonder of the Holy Ghost’s indwelling and commission us upon receipt of it. Somehow we need to remember and revitalize the sign we have been given… reimagine our Jesus or refigure Him so that we don’t forget instead of always looking for a new sign. “In other words, we must re-cite, re-site, our refigurations so that they do not reflect ourselves back to us;” I think this means I should not look at my understanding of Jesus and looking back at myself.

Looking back at myself shows nothing, because I just continue to perceive myself as perfectly or imperfectly as my imagination reveals. To see the truth, I need a mirror, I need to look at Jesus. Can a male Jesus reflect me, a woman accurately? Alliaume continues to want to use the word “covering” to refer to Jesus’ redemptive act, so she asks the question, is Jesus’ blood the sort that can wipe out female sins, female uncleanness? “Since Jesus’ incarnation as a man has not been understood as ‘covering’ women, when we ‘put Him on,’ as McLaughlin suggests, we do so illegitimately.” She does not equate covering, protection from the Father’s wrath, with the husband’s covering for his wife; that would be too much of a stretch for the Jesus sacrifice. A feminist does not want to involve a man in her redemption, in her resulting sanctification, that “putting on” of Jesus. So McLaughlin searches for a legitimized identification in Jesus, because she still finds in congruencies between His actions (from which I refuse to remove the cross sacrifice) –a  refiguration of Jesus that has to be more than a reinstatement of humanity. Perhaps this Jesus question of an identifying point for women as well as men must be prefaced with something Grant notes: “the maleness of Jesus is superseded by the Christness of Jesus.” Jesus’ messiahship holds redemptive qualities for men and women, so says Paul and the other Apostles; Jesus’ death and life affect the community. Alliaume appreciates this communal factor through stating, “what is divine about Jesus is also found in the ‘new humanity’ represented by those around Him.”

Having mentioned Sojourner Truth in her attempts to find a female point of comparison with Jesus-like tendencies, Alliaume turns to a social difference between women in identification with Jesus. The difference in Christology between black women vs. white women is typically more for black women as Jesus suffering with them, while white women are placed in a different sort of social circumstances: they are unable to think of Jesus as a co-sufferer because they are not trodden down to such a low place as the black women have been… they are captured in aristocracy while being quietly abused and exploited behind closed doors. The black women were mistreated in public, and so could identify more closely with the publicness of Jesus’ pain and suffering. “Grant recognizes that, for Christians ‘there is a direct relationship between our perception of Jesus Christ and our perception of ourselves.’” While we cannot see look at our figure of Jesus and just be looking at another picture of us, the Jesus we cling to us one whose social circumstances, ethnicity, maybe even gender offer hope for our specific situations. Such is true for the different races of women that Alliaume choses to become involved with: “After the abolition of slavery, social and economic pressure kept black women in such substitutionary roles of ‘voluntary’ surrogacy as domestics for white families, or heads of their own single-parent families” The female sin tendency of over-submission out of selfishness continues to fascinate me as I watch women manipulate Jesus in order to prevent themselves from sinning, and in the end, only find themselves without means of redemption: if Jesus does not suffer and die in one’s Christology, we miss out on the life He has already lived and have to die unworthily, unable to pay for our own unrighteousness.

Through the biblical Hagar, Alliaume sees a picture of the normal/formative experience shared by all women: submission and survival, submission for survival, and often, ultimate rejection in response for the submission. She refers to this time of Hagar’s life as her “wilderness experience.” For the black woman, Hagar’s God is felt very real-ly… making “’a way out of no way.’” This is not a liberation experience, but rather a new understanding/revelation of resources, which were not previously recognized. Equating Hagar to Jesus, we understand that we women cannot deny suffering, Hagar’s character testifies “to the impossibility of theodicy, offering only a chastened hope that, while God neither prevents nor provokes her suffering, s/he does, compassionately, ‘make a way out of no way.’”Hagar, then, is used to picture the black women of America’s Jesus, for she acknowledges the suffering and absence of new redemptive means—but that Jesus is present in the suffering and renews understanding of situations to reconfigure into redemptive possibility. Sojourner Truth, Alliaume states, is the white woman’s stereotypical figure of identification with Jesus… conquering the hardships of experiences life to achieve an ambiguous state of uncertain equality with men… performing male tasks/roles in a female body.

The Virgin Mary is also used by feminists as “corrective to the maleness-of-Jesus problem” (which really isn’t a problem, just the male sin tendency problem, I think). Somehow the submissive, gentle Mary figure is viewed as “’a model of full womanhood and liberated humanity’ for all Christian Asian women…” potentially because she retains her womanly roles which feminists continue to rebel against. “It is our own formation, whether by oppressive structures or no, that agency paradoxically lies.” Agency in this case refers to the picking up and bearing, I think, of representing…. How we are going to resemble Jesus. Alliaume plays with the difference I the words reassemble and resemble, suggesting that if a woman is going to take on the likeness of Christ, she must first reassemble the image to one into which she can step as a women: female take on male likeness? Jesus will change shape again with each female attempt to reconfigure our life-depiction of Him. We have so much freedom, then, to try and be like Jesus, if we will only let Him be who He is and stop manipulating His sacrifice, our own redemption, to extract for ourselves a life example. Of course we need to reconfigure Christianity, but that includes a realization of Jesus as our mirror, whose death and resurrection are undeniable, and thus we too are called to die to self. Feminist Christology seems to omit the need to lose the self, that female sin tendency by placing oppression’s blame on all the males. We need the promise of a salvation in our Jesus figure who will not only redeem, but continually transform us. If we deny His maleness, which truly was devoid of action in sin tendency, can we do this? How can a woman really be like Jesus?

It has been quite the time up here in Johnson City, NY over the past week: my last final examination wrapped up a week ago Monday morning, so the week was devoted to having final good conversations with people I might never see again, reading, writing and studying some topics of interest, and trying to absorb the final days with the community I have lived in for the past 2 years. So much has happened in such a concentrated amount of time; turning 20 years old about a week before my graduation really left me with the impression of how fast time flies, especially when events are so concentrated and conversation so fascinating. Even today, my first day of work with my Bachelor’s degree… I thought I would feel different. I thought I would sensibly or intelligible discern some sort of click, like I finally snapped into some different frame of mind upon receiving my Bachelor of Religious Education with a concentration in Christian Counseling– but I didn’t feel anything like that. Jesus has been teaching me that there is no such thing as magic words, automatic changes… and feeling only lasts if it is genuine and maintained. Graduation came and went in a rush, and in a way, I felt aloof the whole time, watching, yet involved.

Graduation, since nothing new falls into being upon receiving a diploma and changing a tassel on a cap, feels to me like a confirmation of everything that has occurred over the past several years of life. I was only here at Davis for 2 years, two of the fullest years of my life that have changed me into an entirely different person. So when graduation was over, I looked back to who I was and where I was with Jesus… spent a few hours paging through the multiple notebooks I have faithfully maintained, some letters I have written, and feel like I was so young when I stepped onto this campus. So naive. And I realize I still am. Through this past year especially, and this semester in particular, Jesus and I have begun to walk a closer road, one I hope is getting progressively closer in relationship. I wish I had more time for reflection, but I am still in the process of storing up memories and preparing for life ahead leaving here. Jesus has brought me through a lot, and I feel more young now then when I got here, though I know I have been growing  (and have a lot more growing to do to).

Events like graduation are some of the times I honestly dread most: I don’t want to be the center of anyone’s attention– I guess that is rather antisocial of me. But my friends convinced me that even if I don’t need pictures and ceremony to feel like what I have wrestled through with Jesus at this phase of my life has resulted in change, maybe those outside my life need it. So in the spirit of love that mutually binds us together, I am enclosing a link to 57 of the 200 + pictures my dear twin Chelsea barraged me with on graduation eve and day. I appreciate those who were able to come out, and those who shared love without being able to come! Hope these pictures make you feel a bit more apart of that phase of life:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=21469&l=4fb93&id=500695512 And so the journey is bound to continue now.

So for those who couldn’t come, I will recount graduation events: We had a Senior banquet Friday evening, which all my family but Morgan (18 year old sis) came up for; I guess as senior officer I was more in charge of the student sharing than I realized, but amid the food and talk, talents and pictures were shared… friends and laughter  enjoyed, and awards dispersed. I get so lost in my studies that I never realize things like academic excellence, leadership, etc. are sometimes rewarded, and I did receive several awards. One in particular really encouraged me towards the future… that my professors think I could become a scholar with more hard work and dedication. Fun, busy evening. The three girls spent the night with me, Trevor with my friend Matt, and early the next morning, we dressed up again and attended commencement. I was very moved by some of the events… some of the songs, people I saw again, and overwhelming goodbyes. I think part of my favorite “hope” in Jesus is that we Christians never have to say goodbye. We’re still part of the same body, and we can still love each other from afar. We have filled needs in each others’ lives, blessing and sharpening one another. The family stayed until Sunday, got to meet my Church… everything happened in a whirlwind.

And then this morning at my library job for the week, I realized just how much all that I was blessed with over the weekend means to someone who has no opportunity for it. How I wish I could give my graduation experience to others; how much I am still learning to realize my need to remain in community despite loner tendencies; God has blessed me far too richly with education and graduation, and I am so grateful…. to those who have contributed to my learning through letters, phone calls, email, finances, teaching, friendship, love… I am eternally indebted.

May we continue to seek to live these lives as a blessing.
In our Holy Jesus,
Hannah

Review and Response to Julie M. Hopkins’ Towards a Feminist Christology:

I have been journeying with Jesus for a long time towards what it means for me, a woman, to identify with the person and work of Jesus. I guess right now I am discovering that I am not typical as far as women and their feelings go at this time of my life; at 20 years old, I do not have the same sorts of emotional attractions or desires as I guess many girls my age, so people tell me I’m weird, but Jesus and I are OK with that. How do I as an abnormal woman love and live like Jesus? So He and I had a chat about this interesting book on female identification with Jesus—feminine Christology? My Christology as a woman? Hopkins lent me quite a number of thoughts to incorporate with my own as I try to let go of the selfishness within me which tries to bend Jesus the way my feminine sin wants to go.

I have professed to marrying Jesus, have I not, multiple times? I guess in that spiritual sense of marital considerations, I have committed myself to loving Him and becoming like Him in my life… from the inside out. Jesus has given me a new heart inscribed with His love letter, the Torah, and through our relationship, He balances out the way sin has bent me. I am learning that Christology, which I want to think of in the un-traditional, un-systematic theological definition of Christology being involving Jesus in my life through conversation with Him, relating with Him through interactions in which I act in order to please Him… studying His life so as to learn what it really looks like to lay aside my pet sins, which are partially defined by my female nature. As a woman, I think I tend to sin differently than men because of that curse on my nature that I obtained in Eve by biting that apple… sins which I tend to think of as characterized by over-dependency and over-submission.

In Genesis 3:16, NJB, God says to Eve “I shall give you intense pain in childbearing, you will give birth to your children in pain. Your yearning will be for your husband, and he will dominate you.” I have a perpetual argument with psychologists who state that dominance is a result of the curse on women… because I think women will desire her husband so much that she will invite misuse in order to feel loved. This I think can include a sense of manipulation, allowing herself to be exploited in order to gain his attention and attraction. The curse motivates a female type of selfishness… that I will tend to describe as “over-submissiveness” or the desire to be conquered.

Sure, we appreciate protection and caring, guarding, but in extreme forms, I think the curse can tend to motivate masochistic tendencies within the female for dealing with the guilt of sin. Somehow, I have read numerous books and articles dealing with the subject of women and sin, both spiritual and existential effects of sin on women, and I find myself incapable still of explaining the whole mess. However, the following statement continues to strike me as true: “For many women, sin-talk functions as a “rhetoric of otherness”: a cultural mechanism that assigns to women false guilt and self-blame, and in so doing traps them on the underside of the economy of gender relations” (McDougall, Sin-No More? A Feminist Re-Visioning of a Christian Theology of Sin. Anglican Theological Review. Spring 2006. <http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3818/is_/ai_n17174906>.)

The only reason I testify alongside feminists as to the substance of the female nature is that I have witnessed and experienced similar feelings of guilt and responsibility, not only for my own sins, of which I am always solely responsible, in spite of the deception factor, but also those sins of others. Feminist theology, I think, tries to balance the scales of sin distribution and female approach to relationship with God—but its attempts swing more radically than needful to bring Christianity back into a correct perspective. From Hopkins’ perspective, however, “Feminist theology is the last gap of many thinking women in the churches to renew the faith before Christianity perishes for lack of vision.” (9)

I have always appreciated the perspective of feminist Christianity, because I think it readily acknowledges aspects of the female nature, which are too commonly ignored. Hopkins claims that the goal of exploring a feminist Christology is the “critical transformation of women and men into a new way of being church where salvation in its broadest sense as physical, social, and spiritual fullness is enjoyed and shared as a sign of hope to the world.” (9) However, mainstream theology (which has become the systematic theology of male theologians, in spite of their own divorce and distancing from God in its midst) captures a Christological significance of Jesus which is threatened through feminist exposure of “the layer of mystification and dialogical abuse which has brought Christology in dispute in the eyes of many women,” (9) so claims Hopkins. She feels male theologians make Christology sexist in systematic theology, which is a misuse, because Christology should be universally applicable. This is what Hopkins pursues throughout the entirety of Towards a Feminist Christology, an application of the work of Christ and identification with Christ that extends universally to men and women.

What a risky statement though: “If culture and socio-economic conditions have such a formative influence upon Christology, then one must accept that all christologies are contextual and that this relativises our understanding of the truth.” (11) Can we deny that culture and circumstances affect one’s understandings of God? Of course not, all of scripture bears witness to man’s understanding of God through the situations of life. It is also true that “people in different cultural and socio-economic contexts have different existential needs and therefore different understandings of what salvation is and how it is to be realized or received.” (12) I guess this means my different needs will dictate the different ways in which I “feel” the presence of Jesus—and I want to extend those circumstances to gender differences as well. I think gender differences are some of those situations/circumstances that dictate different needs for which Jesus is provision. That ties back to what I noted about the curse; my feminine bent to over-submit and to selfishly desire so much that I give beyond what is right and good, or the flip-side… my good and right ability to love, but to a point beyond boundaries where my love enables people to continue in sin or unhealthy dependency. Jesus can meet those parts of my insufficiency, just as well as He can fully compensate for the male curse tendencies.

“We need to rediscover the original Protestant emphasis on faith as living without security, of living without evidence and proof in the love of God.” (13) If I am to live as a woman in this world where my femininity leaves me vulnerable, I need to learn trust and love of Jesus in my community setting to be the all I need without some sort of preemptive proof. Yet of course I want some sort of existential assurance that Jesus is always with me, for “the process of objectifying and ordering the world around us and developing a conscious ego is mediated to us through the language we learn as children.” (13) Maybe some truth is really best left unsaid… I need to leave those gaps in my set of beliefs for the movement of Jesus beyond my imagination; I cannot box Him in too tightly. I call this boxing in of my Jesus, my God, into a predictable rubric of behavior by the same term as Hopkins, “domestication.” We have definitely domesticated Christianity, and because of it our Christology. This effects the emasculation of our ministers… who were one representations of the powerful, kingly Jesus, but now are expected to hold the service, foot-washing position of Jesus (14). Here we encounter the masculine problem of Jesus… such servile work as foot-washing is too humiliating to the male ego, and thus left for the women, who would more willingly submit to anything in order to maintain peace.

Hopkins observes that this progression of emasculated men to brash and unapologetic women occurred somewhat simultaneously with change of ministerial role from dominant to subservient. (15) In her surroundings on the Netherlands and Western Europe, Hopkins further notes that women ministers typically serve in ecumenical or small congregations. She offers a touching example of a group of female ministers in Amsterdam who went to live and serve among the needy, like Jesus (16). Yet “these women began to perceive that an unbridled passion to love and care for everybody and redeem Amsterdam could prove a motor for self-destruction.” (16) Developing a club, “Eve Around Amsterdam”: “Now they regularly organize study days for their own in-service training, to develop new theory and practice for the pastorate based on developing critical awareness of the dynamics of power in church and theology which pressurize women to offer themselves as living sacrifices, to collude to their own exploitation and self-denial in the name of Christ.” (16)

How many of we women are getting so desperate as to offer ourselves to God’s service in spite of the costs? Hopkins believes that “many lay Christian women are presently wrestling with the negative consequences of inherited Christological doctrine.” (16) If our Christology has been defined be emasculated men who didn’t themselves find true identification with and embodiment in the person of Christ, how can we truly the theology we have been handed down? Over the past 10-15 years upon composition of her book in 1994, Hopkins observed a shift in the Christological beliefs amongst Christian women (17). I am speculating here, but I see how the shift in belief could have resulted from desperation to be free from societal guilt and personal conscience developed through societal guilt. We women have learned to define our being and the nature of our personhood from a Christian community that expects self-sacrifice of Christian women; but now this feminine self-sacrifice expected by culture must combine with self-sacrificing Jesus who embodies all the “feminine virtues” in order for women to identify with Jesus.

It is so easy for we women to develop of sense of female subjectivity for sins, like the feminists, because each woman “feels need to accept personal responsibility for what she does.” (25) We take on the burden of guilt draped over out shoulders, and some of us decide that to identify with Jesus, it is necessary for us to go to the cross to pay for sin as well. Oh how easily the weight of glorious grace and mercy slips through the fragile hands of desperate women.

Maybe the liturgical cycle, which moves annually through Jesus’ life, death and resurrection allows women a powerful medium of identification with the crucified Jesus (25) that can be easily abused by the selfishness of our female sin tendencies. I think the desire to pay for my own sins rather than heaping them on Jesus is rooted in my selfish sin. “In the Latin tradition, certainly since the fifth century, sin has been inextricably associated with sex.” (51) Maybe this is Hopkins attempt to fault liturgy itself with female difficulty over grace and atonement. Thus, “the question arises, is it possible to preach ‘Christ crucified’ without evoking forms of guilt and masochism.” (52) This “question about the appeal of the crucified Christ is a complex one. On the one hand, Jesus on the cross encouraged oppressed people to accept their suffering under their taskmasters as in some sense redemptive, but on the other hand, the suffering Jesus gave them a sense of comfort, for God in Jesus, understood their heavy load.” (53) New Testament believers did not turn to the masochistic desire to pay for sin like Jesus, but found meditation “upon a suffering Jesus-messiah” to prompt steadfastness when undergoing suffering and “strategy to survive through hope in a new liberated future.” (53) How do we women relinquish that selfish desire of self-atonement in order to strategically imagine our liberating hope enough to experience that grace of God?

God’s mercy may be defined by the simple fact that regardless of who we are, who we consciously or unknowing harm, God is with us if we have entered into covenant with Him. I know I often feel I do not deserve such covenant, something I am very justified in feeling, but Hopkins encourages me that my failing “is also a part of the history of the presence of God with us and finally it is a question of hope that the God who knows and feels everything in our hearts shall deal justly and mercifully with us.” (61) How will I remember and re-experience that presence when I am tempted to deny grace again for my selfish self-reliance? Brueggemann espouses this phenomenal, biblical idea of speaking into being… mimicking my Father God and the power of my Jesus, the Living Word. But “even dialogue about Christology could become another form of literalism, of dead words, if those who dialogue have never danced to the rhythm of the celebration of life and resurrection.” (77) Dying to self, I guess is the key… and the atonement is a sacrifice I cannot offer, because I am not a sinless priest to offer up the offering for sin; my sin prevents me from sacrificing to God… so no matter how much self-atonement I may masochistically exact from myself, I am still in need of a mediator, an intercessor on my behalf.

Hopkins notes the Jesus tradition of “a mediating Logos or Heavenly man brings salvific knowledge from God to initiates who are divinely reborn and freed from the evil world for ultimate union with God.” (84) The evil of the world towards woman is the enemy which Hopkins as a feminist passionately rejects as a male problem imputed to women as their own sins: “ the objection, the denigration and sometimes demonization of female biological processes and sexuality” (93) are the feminist’s enemies affecting the female difficulty in identifying with Jesus. “Women suffer from this problem directly through experiences of incest, sexual abuse, pornography, rape, and their exclusion from some holy orders.” (93) We women are truly a weaker sex, more easily deceived, and therefore the fragility of our personhoods is more easily lost, because we too often allow these cruel treatments because of our own sin tendencies, selfish subjugation of ourselves. Hopkins is right to encourage women that “they do not need to internalize these male projections or passively accept violence against their bodies and minds.” (93) Instead, she suggests that we can “reclaim their embodied selves as made in the image of God and potentially a source of divine presence,” (93) which I find to be a fascinating concept.

A meeting place of divine presence? I suppose Paul does talk about the body being the temple of the Holy Spirit, and common Christian language locates Jesus as residing “in my heart.” Hopkins takes this idea of the female body being just as much God’s temple as a man’s one step further to self-image/self-esteem, which I think has been a historic battle of woman against herself, though not uninfluenced by her society. Hopkins believes that “the meeting of the divine essence and the human essence in the female flesh can only take place if women can learn to love and cherish their own bodies.” (93) This process of learning to love and cherish our own bodies, which I think most of we women tend to hate and reject as imperfect has no narcissistic connotations to the suggestions of love, but rather self-definition. I appreciate the aspect of feminism that encourages women to explore our own identities– feminist Christianity encouraging the exploration of self with Jesus rather than merely accepting the systematic Christology we have been handed over the years. The problem with self-definition, however, is that there are very few role models by which we women can learn to establish our own identities (93).

Historically women have been considered the possession of men; “Even exceptional women such as queens, abbesses, mystics and writers were protected by powerful male sponsors who influenced their values, thoughts an behaviors.” (93-4) However, female self-identification is crucial to the understanding of true self before God and learning how we truly are to be Jesus and love Jesus because “there are in fact fundamental differences between the sexes based upon a complex interaction between biology (sex) and socialization (gender).” (94) I don’t think that’s groundbreaking news, women do life differently than men for we have been built both internally and externally different than men: we have different spirit-natures just as much as we have different physical natures. The male being and the female being drastically differ. Thus, our language of explorative self-definition will differ.

Language becomes key in the female self-definition; we must be careful what sort of language we utilize in our self-definition, Hopkins warns, since “from the moment a girl is born she hears only the language created by a male culture to enforce the power of father/God the Father.” (95) This, Hopkins pronounces, evidences that “all language is mediated through though and all thought is created by language which comes from society and culture not from the individual.” (95) Thus we have the burden of reinvention, for we “must begin to create new language and culture based upon a positive affirmation of their embodied existence and desires.” (96) This creation of language and development of new substance from which to define ourselves and our feminine identities allows us to bridge the dualism of emotion and reason in ourselves, and allows for simultaneous comprehension of God and transcendent and immanent.” (96) Female self-definition affects not only her self, but also her theology. I like Hopkins’ explanation of this process“…twin projects of external collective action and internal personal mysticism need to be developed simultaneously.” (96)

That “personal mysticism” is something like that experience of Jesus that meets out own individual needs as male and female. I guess since my natural desires and interests aren’t those of typical women, He will meet what I need by His provision… maybe I need to better understand that everything boils down to just my Jesus in the end. I am almost terrified to take Hopkins up on the challenge to “emphasize the becoming of God in the female flesh rather than the presence of God in the abstract human being.” (96) But I suppose I have been asking my Jesus to embody me… to help me be Him to others. Hopkins asserts that for me, a woman, God in flesh, my Jesus, must somehow embody my own sexuality. Somehow my womanhood affects my nature and the ways in which I reflect the person of Jesus, relate to Him. So Hopkins suggests a feminine alternative within the Bible itself to a male Jesus: “Sophia is describes as the female hypostatis of God who is the creative, revelatory wisdom and justice of God.” (84) Wisdom. She adds that “an older tradition of speculation upon a divine mediator between God and humanity, namely ‘Hokma,’ or in the Greek ‘Sophia,’ the wisdom of God.” (84) So in Jesus, am I as a woman to recognize a male embodiment of wisdom, “a promise of the grace of God?” (97). Is Jesus the male New Testament equivalent of the feminine Hokmah of the Old Testament?

I must recognize distinctiveness in my embodiment by Jesus, because my life experiences being a woman will be different from His as a male. Somehow, Hopkins ties in the difference of mine and Jesus’ experiences of the nature and essence He embodied to a transcendent nature of “the wounds of love and the thirst for justice” beyond “the differences between women and men, women and God.” (97) The Kingdom of Heaven is as much with me as a man reflecting, loving, living out Jesus because we are both in His image, but it is so very different. Regardless of gender, Hopkins wants us to find a universally relevant Jesus. But we must sort this Jesus, the son of God with whom men and women identify differently out from amidst a myriad of Christologies: “the test for a contemporary Christology in a time of change is how far new understandings and imaged of Jesus empower us to seek in the depths of our present, the qualities and values necessary for the healing and renewing of ourselves, our societies, and our planet.” (100-101)

Who I see Jesus to be is a spiritual conception that should have existential results, I think. Belief motivating obedience? The Jesus Hopkins is searching for corresponds with a “fluidity of identity for feminism has meant rejecting artificial structures of unity in factor of ever-changing and transforming process of dialogue, interaction and creativity.” (102) How complicated our understanding of this Jesus gets, using human experience as “the starting point and ending point of the hermeneutical circle.” (104) Our experiences as Western women are based in this “either-or” sort of mentality, deriving separatistic thinking from a separation between self and those to be related with. We segregate ourselves culturally as “a form of ‘epistemic control’ which has led to an inability in the west to listen to ‘the other’ with genuine openness and vulnerability.” (105) So in the end, our Kingdom of Heaven and the differences within each of us should motivate towards expansiveness through sharing. Through such suggestion, Hopkins aims at reconstructing Christology for women regardless of how “intellectually or doctrinally risky that appears to be.” (105)

The Christological reconstruction requires techniques “from below,” referring to basic and sufficient information on the texts about Jesus “to be able to read the gospels without completely projection (our) own presupposition, values and norms onto the text.” (107) The presuppositions we bring, Hopkins would espouse, are brought to the text from the male-defined culture in which live, either what we have learned or our reactions. Thus Hopkins seeks to encourage women to redefine our Christologies through the text without the influence of the masculine language we have been fed—another quest after self-definition. This is because Hopkins perceives that masculine language offends women because “their relationships as mothers, daughters, lovers and friends is shut out of the inner circle of their relationality within the ‘immanence ‘of the Godhead’.”(109) This probably motivates the sort of distancing we women do between Jesus and the Father, and subsequently ourselves from the person of Jesus as well as the Father.

Relational distancing driven by externally-defined/culturally-defined language rather than internally-defined, self-defined language leads Hopkins to note negatively that “in my opinion most Christians are monotheists.” (110) When we women distance the relationship between God and Jesus, we tend to neglect Jesus’ divinity… though this is a separation I am trying to work against, and I think Hopkins in some way too, striving towards an embodiment of the hypostatic unity of Jesus. “Women searching for their own Christological discourse wish to go beyond the effort to deconstruct tradition.” (109) We want to put something back together. We want to draw on our experiences and the language we learned through them to express to Jesus and depict out Jesus. “If our spirituality is deep enough to embrace all aspects of life, whether personal, social, natural or cosmic then the theological controversies surrounding the nature of ‘Christ’ can respectfully be circumvented.” (111) Jesus causes “ever aspect of discrimination, exploitation and abuse of power is exposed as deconstructive to the holiness and goal of life.” (113)

So I come back almost to where I started in seeking a mode of relating with my Jesus… I have married Him, yes, is that as close as I can picture to embodying Him? How comfortable are we with the language of spiritual possession? So my selfish sin tendency of over-submission seeks to serve my selfishness and maybe when my Jesus gets convicting, I try and distance myself through the excuse of male language. I am a woman, however weird of a female I may be, and my being, spirit and body, and female in nature. I relate to Jesus as a woman… so I must embody Him in my imaginative language in order to somehow define myself on His terms as I can understand and implicate them. What a terrifying responsibility, for after that, I must do so with others… in that community which will keep breaking my fragile Christology with new challenges. Jesus, thank you for being so much bigger than me! I can only be part feministic.