Feminist Theology :: essays research papers

3Write what you know, the pundits say, and I agree, we are conditioned to take the road less traveled by with only the different drummer to keep us company. As a student, I often find myself stumbling around in the theological woods, feeling lost, losing hope and ending up with mud everywhere, nevertheless curiously on my face. However, the journey, while it lasts, is more interesting than the interstate highway of common knowledge it certainly has a way of keeping complacency at bay. For me, that set out has often been something theological. I withal often find myself playing the devils advocate asking, What does God look like to those who belong to the rigid social order of the Jewish-Orthodox church, look like in the twentieth-first century? When modern feminist theologians look at the text of the scriptures, they are quick to point out neglected aspects of the banter and are quick to quarrel the "patriarchal" worldviews and assumptions that many consider to be bib lical, but may indeed only be cultural. Evangelical feminists who uphold the impartiality of the biblical text as the Word of God have done much to cause the Church to reexamine its views on the role of women in the Church. The challenge has come not from social movements but from the biblical texts themselves. It is essential that we as students look beyond the hermeneutical value, to that which is ingrained in the text not because of truth but rather because of tradition. Professor Tribles research on Adam and Eve notes that the Fall created an inequality in the family relationship that had not existed before. And if Christ has become a cure for us (Galatians 313), that curse of inequality is undone in Him as well as in the text in which she refers our attention. Feminist theologians have also recovered the neglected feminine references to God in scripture (noting the word for Spirit, Ruach, in Hebrew, is feminine) and pointed out the roles of women in the Bible as deacons, co-l aborers with Paul in ministry, settle of the nation (Deborah), and possibly even apostles (Junia of Romans 167). There are, of course, other things going on in Professor Tribles writing, but the subtext of theological issues gives each flooring its texture as the abstract ideas intertwine with the actual plot. If I write about nomadic Arabs in 1919 Palestine and describe the tents and daily tea ritual, how flowerpot I fail to bring in the Quran?