Feminist Theology :: essays research papers

3Write what you know, the pundits say, and I agree, we ar conditioned to take the road less traveled by with more thanover the different drummer to keep us company. As a student, I ofttimes find myself stumbling around in the theological woods, feeling lost, losing hope and determi province up with mud everywhere, but especially 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 seed has often been something theological. I also often find myself playing the devils advocate asking, What does God number like to those who belong to the rigid social order of the orthodox church, tactual sensation like in the twentieth-first century? When modern feminist theologians look at the schoolbook of the scriptures, they are quick to point turn up neglected aspects of the leger and are quick to challenge the "patriarchal" worldviews and assumption s that many consider to be scriptural, but may indeed only be cultural. Evangelical feminists who exert the integrity of the biblical text as the Word of God defy done much to cause the Church to reexamine its views on the fictional character of women in the Church. The challenge has come non 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 cuss 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-laborers with Paul in ministry, judges 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 apologue its texture as the abstract ideas intertwine with the actual plot. If I compose about nomadic Arabs in 1919 Palestine and describe the tents and daily tea ritual, how can I fail to bring in the Quran?