Feminist Re-Imagination of
Doctrine and Tradition

1. Metaphorical Theology and Radical Re-Imagination of God Metaphorical Theology

A theologian Sallie McFague has elaborated the structure of a metaphorical theology. Sallie McFague has attempted this in her books “Metaphorical Theology,” “Models of God” and “The Body of God” by outlining a new theological method and a new way of imaging the relationship between God and the world.

The purpose of this theological model is to crave a third way between religious that is idolatrous, regarded by its users as having the capacity to refer literally to God and language that is irrelevant so sceptical of making valid claims about God that it seems meaningless. It provides a elaboration on Schussler’s concept of the Bible as historical prototype or root-model. McFague regards “the kingdom of God” as the root metaphor of Christianity, supported and fed by many extended metaphors, various parables which leaves its meaning ambiguous, multileveled imagistic. It also generates translation languages into more conceptual discourses, which lend it “precision and consistency.”

McFague proposes that all language about God must be seen as metaphorical. Names and titles like “Father” are metaphors for how we as humans perceive God to act in the world. They almost say nothing about God ontologically because we cannot know God in himself, yet we do know that there is a reality behind the metaphors. Metaphorical theology thus tries to provide a multiplicity of metaphorical models for understanding God and the relationship between God and the world in ways that are meaningful today.

Metaphors are not definitions but they relate what we cannot talk about directly (in this case, God) to what we already know and understand. They are grids through which reality is filtered, highlighting some aspects while filtering out others. Thus, the metaphor of God as Mother is not saying that God is a Mother (or even female) but that our image of mother highlights certain characteristics of God (such as love for the world) that fit the metaphor while overlooking other characteristics that do not. Such a theology, according to McFague, is constructive.

A significant point that McFague makes repeatedly is that metaphorical theology is metaphorical. It is hypothetical, tentative, partial and open-ended. Its results will not be definitive for all time but are useful only for the time in which they are constructed. It uses the resources of scripture and tradition, but it also includes insights from human experience, the natural and social sciences, art, literature and other non-religious sources where there are areas in science that cannot be described conventionally, so metaphors that draw on elements we do understand are used to picture that which we cannot.

Metaphor and Language about God

As we read the Scriptures we are constantly coming across such metaphorical language where God is spoken of as a father, mother, husband, shepherd, farmer, builder, fisherman, doctor, scribe, king, warrior, potter, lion, rock, and so on. Sally McFague, for example, declares that metaphorical theology is superior to that systematic theology which has become “overly abstract, conceptual and systematic”. She also proposes new metaphors
and models to those contained in Scripture saying that “in the language of dying and rising gods,
personal guilt and sacrificial atonement, eternal life and so forth do not address the contemporary
situation as depicted.”

Radical Re-Imagination of God

Christopher Lensch, argues that the feminist theology of the Re-Imagining movement stresses experience and the retelling of life stories, especially stories of abuse, repression, and defilement. Feminist story telling is a claimed contribution to the church. Personal stories challenge traditional theology by encouraging it to abandon moral absolutes and by encouraging the church to make its message more relational. One would expect to find feminine qualities, a nurturing spirit, for example, in feminist theology.

Mary Daly, a radical feminist, said: “If God is male, then male is God. The divine Patriarch castrates women as long as he is allowed to live on in the human imagination.” God is
almost always referred to as 'He'. We speak of God as 'Father', of Jesus as 'Son'. Theologically
speaking God has no gender. God is purely spiritual and has no body. Since gender is primarily a bodily thing it is hard to see how a non-physical thing could possess it. However, for
Christians, when God became human in the incarnation he came as a man. Thus, for Christians,
God in history was male.

Sylvia Thorson-Smith, a radical feminist proclaimed that Re-Imagining helped them to experience an entire space as sacred with God ‘herself’ being experienced. She also advised, “The church needs to speak truth to power,” challenging the “Pax Americana” and the “exploitation of the environment.” “We need to build coalitions with other re-imaginers in other denominations and across the world,” and she concluded that they need to reconnect themselves to risk-taking.”

2. Feminist Theological Engagement with Mary

Mary has been indeed an ambivalent character for women. Because Mary is seen as both virgin and mother of Jesus Christ. Traditional Marian theology can therefore be seen as an expression of men’s inability to cope with women in positions of 9ecclesial)power, but ultimately with women’s bodies and their sexuality. Rosemary Radford Ruether in her book- The Feminism Face of the Church, argues that Mary as the feminine personification of the Church also represents the prototype of liberated humanity. Some feminist theologians understand Mary’s virginity as a symbol of her independent choice to participate in God’s work of salvation. Other see her as the important feminine side in a theology dominated by a male father-God.

For both Latin American and Asian Women, Mary is present and empathizes with their daily struggles as mothers of children who suffer and are victims of oppressive, patriarchal regimes. Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza argues for a deconstruction of patriarchal Mariology and the symbolism involved. She means that essentially rejection of all patriarchal conception of both masculinity and femininity. Mary’s symbol claimed and reclaimed as a vital female figure in Christian Theological symbol as inevitable presence of women in the Church. Elizabeth A. Johnson and Elizabeth Stuart argued that feminist re-appropriate of the concept of the communion of saints and the idea of saints as role models and companions on women’s spiritual journeys.

3. “In Memory of Her”: Re-Imagination Tradition

Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza is one of the proponents of this thought and has also written a very methodological and intense study In Memory Of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins. She seeks to reclaim early Christian history as women’s history and to reveal biblical traditions as the history of both women and men. These goals help one to answer questions regarding women’s activity in the early Christian movement and to restore the memory of early Christian women’s sufferings, struggles, and power to contemporary readers. She integrates her training in feminist theory, biblical exegesis (specifically of the New Testament), and historical-theological critical methods to achieve the goals. In the process, Fiorenza offers a groundbreaking study of Christian origins, or, more specifically, a fuller vision of early Christian communities that includes women as important historical actors.

Elisabeth Fiorenza ‘In Memory of her’ she developed her hermeneutic of reconstruction. Fiorenza makes it very clear that the point of departure is not the Bibles as normative authority. Women’s experience and their struggle for liberation becomes the locus of authority. The canon is not the Bible but the struggle. She stresses with power and pointedness the face that all interpretation of the Bible has been skewed and that all interpretation of the Bible has come from an advocacy point of view, whether that advocacy happens to be patriarchal or feminist.

In her book, Fiorenza also deals with Church and Women. Women are Church, and always have been Church, called and elected by God and transformation rests on the recovery of the historical evidence of the ecclesia or discipleship of equals, which serves to animate a new paradigm for authentic discipleship and praxis by standing as the normative pattern for continuing communities of inclusive faith and practice