Key Terms, Concepts, Figures, Issues
1. Fides quaerens intellectum
2. Patriarchy
3. Archetype; Prototype
4. Critical principle of feminist theology (focus on concept of, not
specific instances of)
5. Hermeneutic (including varieties of hermeneutic)
6. Women-church ekklessia gynaikon
7. Systematic theology (Sölle: text, context, community)
8. Gender v. sex
9. Reinhold Niebuhr
10. Finitude: freedom (or self-transcendence)
11. God-language
12. Orthodox; liberal; radical/liberationist
13. Ideology (including sexist ideology)
14. Augustine
15. Immutable god
16. Ideological self-justification (legitimation process)
17. Household code (Haustafeln)
18. Anxiety
19. Pride/sensuality
20. “I am also a woman"
21. full humanity of women
22. great chain of being (implied in Augustinian thinking)
23. experience in theology (from Ruether, Saiving, Schüssler
Fiorenza, Augustine)
24. historical-critical method
Possible essay questions
1. What role does her own historical context play in Saiving’s article?
What are her main claims and how can they be applied to contemporary experiences?
2. In today’s society, what blocks the “full humanity of women”?
3. Explain how tradition is dynamic.
4. Why read St. Augustine for this course?
5. Ruether’s belief that theology is enmeshed in power (including political
power) and how scripture is shaped by and used for political purposes (regarding
everything from family politics to state politics).
6. Explain arguments over the ideal of “objectivity” in scholarship.
How is the pursuit of objectivity political?
7. How are Niebuhr’s ideas affected by Augustine’s?
8. How have feminist responded to N’s neo-Augustinian positions?
9. Account for the hostility of some feminists toward biblical traditions.
How have some feminist Christians responded to this hostility?
10. Explain different appraisals of anxiety in Niebuhr and Saiving.
11. How does the concept of the women-church oppose patriarchy?
12. Explicate, and demonstrate examples of, the circle of legitimation
through which Daly connects the patriarchal language about God to the patriarchal
household.
Sample Titles for Final Projects
Subjects currently under consideration for Fall, 2001:
Feminist Theology in the Literature of Walker and Hurston
Brock's Cross-Cultural Feminist Theology: The Buddhist Sensibility of "Erotic Power"
Titles completed in Spring, 2000:
McFague's Models of God and Indian Cosmologies
A Comparison of Perspectives on Suffering
Christians, Feminists, Wives, Mothers
Hope and Accountability in Niebuhr and Brock
"What Causes People to Sin?"
The role of Jesus in Feminist Christology
The Power of Female Anger
A Feminist Christian Ethic of Stewardship
The Goddess: Important or Irrelevant?
False Claims to Universality
Perceptions of God and Human Relationships
Feminist Theological Support of a Holistic Approach to Medicine
Feminist Hymns? Interpreting Three Hymns by Women
What Does It Have to Do With Me: A White Male's Look at Feminist Theology.
Erotic Love as a Source of Revelation