Women and redemption : a theological history / Rosemary Radford Ruether.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ruether, Rosemary Radford.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women--Religious aspects--Christianity--History of doctrines.

Women.

Redemption--History of doctrines.

Redemption.

Feminist theology.

Women--Religious aspects--Christianity.

Physical Description:

xi, 366 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Minneapolis, MN : Fortress Press, [1998]

Summary:

How did women become identified with sin, and what forces struggled in Christianity's deep ambivalences toward women? In this magisterial work of historical theology, renowned theologian Rosemary Ruether traces a crucial development and shift in the foundational paradigm of Christian understanding of the person, especially in regard to gender and redemption.

Although several paradigms competed for acceptance in the first two centuries of Christianity, Ruether demonstrates, by the fourth century the dominant paradigm defined women as created subordinate by nature to men. This subordination was to be reinforced due to punishment for sin. By contrast, belief in original equality was spiritualized. It referred to a future in heaven beyond gender and sexuality.

It was in the Quaker tradition, Ruether finds, that original equality was reclaimed for this worldly life, to be developed further in nineteenth-century feminist theology. Her work thus discloses the roots of today's Euroamerican and Third World feminist theologies.

This historical counterpart to Ruether's systematic theology, Sexism and God-Talk, is the first comprehensive analysis of how the patriarchal paradigm developed and its challenge by the feminist paradigm over twenty centuries of Christian theological history.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 283-357) and index.

ISBN:

0800629477

0800629450

OCLC:

38270847