Anchor Bible Dictionary Theology - Essay Example

Running Head: ANCHOR BIBLE DICTIONARY THEOLOGY Anchor Bible Dictionary theology of the of the Anchor Bible Dictionary theology This thesis would look into the various aspects of Anchor Bible Dictionary theology and would also analyze this topic in detail in the light of different viewpoints. The turn to the subject, liberation theology, and post modernity, all occur in some way within the works of Anchor Bible Dictionary theologians. In a recent chapter of a book, Susan Ross concludes by noting that in the area of sacramental theology Anchor Bible Dictionary writing is concerned with the human in the mystery of the Incarnation, with the place of gender in the working of symbols, and with the connection between sacramental praxis and social justice. While this is a good summary of interests, Anchor Bible Dictionary theology’s by no means to be taken as a methodologically uniform field. It is harder to keep the distinction between Catholic and Protestant, or between Christian and Jewish, between Judeo-Christian and such interests as the retrieval of Goddess religion, simply because there is so much shared among women, even in rite, beyond institutional divisions. In treating of sacrament, Anchor Bible Dictionary theology, as a form of liberation theology, is concerned with fundamental views of reality and with the shaping of views and practices by patriarchy. To elaborate a radically new way of thinking about and celebrating sacraments, it addresses the critique of ideologies, the retrieval of what has been hidden or submerged, the critique of language and ritual behavior, and praxis. Reutilization, participation, and observation belong together, precisely because Anchor Bible Dictionary theology’s trying not simply to understand what sacrament is or how it works, but to discover what it might become when freed from ideologies, opened to new inspiration, encompassing new experiences, and nourished by new memories. First, the concern is with ritual action and symbolic language that within communities revitalize the Christian tradition from a Anchor Bible Dictionary perspective and draw upon it even while drawing on other religious traditions. Second, while writers often treat of the Church in a comprehensive way and look to a future of celebration within communities of equal discipleship, there is a very particular locus of discourse that is Women-Church or a community of women giving voice and role to women. The foundations of reflective discourse are posited in creative ritual act, through what one might call the process of reutilization par excellence. Sacrament and Woman-Subject Quite interestingly, most of the specific French contribution to an understanding of sacrament does not come from theological writings but from Anchor Bible Dictionarys, such as Julia Kristina, who are interested in religious expression as cultural heritage and look for ways to overcome its male domination. Retrieval of Women-Subject On the side of American Anchor Bible Dictionary influence, the tactic is that of the retrieval of women-subject, with a critique of patriarchal paradigms in language, rite, and institution, and a theological reconstruction of liturgical history. In a recent essay, Mary Collins has outlined five principles of Anchor Bible Dictionary liturgy. The foundational principle is "the ritualizing of relationships that emancipate and empower women." Third, the ritual action seeks "to transform patriarchal schemes of redeemed and redemptive relationships." Fourth, rites develop a fresh repertory of symbolic speech and action. And fifth, Anchor Bible Dictionary liturgy is more interested in producing liturgical events than in producing liturgical texts. This of course makes theological reflection more challenging. In previous work, Collins herself brings together the study of traditional liturgical language and a Anchor Bible Dictionary reconstruction. There is a strong contribution to a renewed sacramental theologian the theological reconstruction of womens roles in the early Church and of the emergence of patriarchy done by Elizabeth Schuster Forensic, but this has to be carried over into history. In an essay on hermeneutics, Schuster Forensic shows how celebration belongs to theological method by enumerating the four kinds of hermeneutics native to Anchor Bible Dictionary theology: a hermeneutic of suspicion, a hermeneutic of proclamation, a hermeneutic of remembrance and historical reconstruction, and finally a hermeneutic of reutilization and celebration, which she also calls creative actualization. These four methods are intertwined, the last one allowing women a means of retrieving the power of their own creative imagination and its emancipator power. Diagnostics of Ordination Practice The question of ordination provides a diagnostic of what needs changing in sacramental practice and sacramental outlook. It is not a mere matter of women seeking ordination. It is rather that policy and thought on ordination represent an understanding of the sacramental and of grace which is discriminatory and male-dominated. As Susan Ross summarizes the matter, sacramental theology cannot assume the prevailing understandings of human experience or of the symbolic and ritual expressions of Christ and of the divine. Even while the distinctive nature of womens experience is affirmed, it also has to be seen as a locus of grace, power, and revelation, which requires not separation but diversity in sacramental ministry and representation. How the historical Jesus is remembered and how the presence and action of the risen Christ is represented is a central issue and means the interweaving of Anchor Bible Dictionary Christology with sacramental theology. Contributions from French Feminism French Anchor Bible Dictionarys contribute in seeking the depth structures of traditional Catholic sacramental symbolism, which they see infected by patriarchy. They do not simply critique the assumptions of universality and patriarchy under girding Western culture and religious traditions, but they are also skeptical of modernitys claim to a retrieval of the subject. While the interest in religious discourse of French Anchor Bible Dictionarys is primarily that of students of culture, they offer specific critiques and suggestions for renewed speech within Christianity, which can offer pragmatic and creative dialogue to Anchor Bible Dictionary theologians. The one whose work seems most amenable to providing creative impulse to sacramental theology’s Julia Kristina. Kristina relates to the postmodern critique of logo centrism and its supposed claims that language and concept can give adequate or direct representations of reality or of the self. Kristina specializes in psychology and language studies and their impact on the social contract. Elements of her work affect the understanding of Christian sacrament. Her critique of patriarchy and her search for new and empowering modes of womens speech are integral to this. The challenge to sacramental practice and theology’s whether there is that in its history and its symbolism, and especially in its origins, which can be retrieved despite the long history of patriarchy. Kristina’s distinction between semiotic and symbolic is helpful. The symbolic is expression that is rational, socially negotiable, and much more overtly conscious, since it has to do with social relations and social power. Communities and societies constitute their social covenant by symbolic expression, which means that it leans heavily on shared significations but also is negotiable as power patterns change. For Kristina, both types of expression are necessary even though in tension. To discover a power of expression within this tradition that contributes to the life of the subject in process, and especially woman-subject, requires what she calls analytic listening and aesthetic practice. The first allows the interpreter to attend to the intersection of the semiotic and the symbolic. The second allows for the retrieval of the power of the semiotic which has been suppressed when subordinated to the symbolic and social code. Discourse and language have high significance for Kristina, for only in access to language can the human person express and resolve drives and orientations. The problem with public discourse is that it may not allow all of societys members their expression, or that it may privilege male discourse, disempowering women in that which is most intimate to them. For Kristina, the preaching and actions of Christ in his approach to persons expresses strong exteriorization which goes beyond the legalism, ritual, and taboos which she finds in the prevailing Jewish religion of his time. While subsequent Christian symbolic discourse emphasizes the interiority of sin rather than external defilement, it has not retained creative and liberating power. The depth structure of womans religious expression is important to Kristina. In particular, Kristina critiques the role of creedal expression in ritual and the role of the symbol of sacrifice. Both touch on something necessary to the communal, but they have turned up in ways that are oppressive of women. Because of its formal nature, creed gives primacy to rational and public expression. If it dominates rite, it suppresses the imaginary and the creative. Kristina finds much in the language of sacrifice that is important, but she understands sacrifice primarily as something violent and suppressive, used as a ruse for forbidding certain pleasures and for keeping other ruptures and instincts to socially disruptive violence in trim. In Christianity, interpretation of Christs death as sacrifice and its ongoing inclusion in the language of Eucharist and spirituality anticipate and prevent the violent action of sacrifice, serving thus as a taboo. In the process, however, it has sanctioned but suppressed the consciousness of a rupture between affirmation of God and human creativity, between spirit and body, and between the male and the female. Of women in particular, it has exacted an inner rupture with their own bodies, forbidden both the fruits of motherhood through union with the child whom in imitation of Mary they are compelled to "sacrifice," and the enjoyment, or jouissance, rooted in the body. In effect then, the Eucharistic rite serves as a taboo which anticipates resort to social violence and checks resort to new sacrifices of persons, deemed necessary to the social order. But it has done this largely by subjugating women to a male-dominated symbolic, allowing her in the social process no place other than that of motherhood, and even then denying her the pleasure of motherhood through the demands of sacrifice. While Kristina seems to acknowledge that this may be creative for mystically inclined women, it has been harmful to those whom she calls "ordinary women" because it allows them no social belonging except through their motherhood and then deprives them of enjoying even that. The sacrament of reconciliation offers a forum for creative healing and empowerment in relation to the divine which transcends gender and social discriminations. Kristina summarizes the expression of this sacrament in the phrase: "I am mortal and I speak." At least Augustine allows us to name the instinctual, even if we have to regret it and renounce it. Discourse, however, if it integrates, can be freeing and reconciling. If God is deemed to be offended when we give unbridled rein to instincts, it is freeing if words of pardon bless rather than suppress these instincts even while generating a creative power that is more spiritual but not less fleshly. While the relation to the divine is vital to the process of healing and reconciliation, sacramental theology could follow through with Kristina’s insights, showing that ecclesial reconciliation is necessary, reconciliation between persons who have offended and those who have given offense. The very need for ecclesial ritual recognition of fault, giving of pardon, and reconciliation, before patriarchy can be overcome, emerges. It allows participants to find the reconciliation and creative juncture between "the body of the mother" and the "law of the father," to negotiate the line between the semiotic and the symbolic creatively. The symbolism of the body, rather than sacrifice, is at the heart of the Eucharist, which is a sacrament of eating and drinking the body and blood of the Lord, of taking Christ into our own bodies. Through the excessive emphasis on the symbolism of sacrifice, the ritual can downplay and even negate the bodily. If the deeply bodily is integrated into discourse, the sacrament elevates the body into the symbolic, all corporeality elevated, spiritualized, and sublimated, allowing place for jouissance and aesthetic expression. The formula over the bread, “This is my body,” is the words of Christ who appeared in the flesh and continues to do so in this sacramental way. They are put out of focus if they are taken as masculine words, repeatable only by males, for they are now Christs words over all that is earthly, cosmic, and human, over all flesh and the relations of flesh. They embrace both the drive-patterned and the socially-patterned, reconciling them within the one body and offering freedom and voice to all so consecrate. English-language writers add nuances to Kristina’s contribution, whose psychologies historical inquiries might otherwise suggest the almost complete muting of an authentic womans voice. For example, while some of the medieval Eucharistic language may at times have provoked psychological tensions in women, in other cases it was given a more positive reading that allowed women creative affirmation, even if this was in some respects marginal to ecclesial structures. An English writer, Mary Grey, has further suggested that womans self-expression in the Christian tradition is not as definitively or solely tied to the maternal, as Kristina assumes. On the subject of appropriate sacramental language, McNally Kearns looks for a more positive use of creed within rite, provided it allows a more doxological expression of faith. In looking at Christian culture, Kristina has focused on rite and its inhibiting power. That is why she finds that in the contemporary world there is more creative power in artistic language and expression, and that this has to become the social or symbolic discourse of the age. In that, women are to have a primary role, since the social must integrate the feminine which has been suppressed. An understanding of sacrament today attempts a better integration of word and sacrament. Even now, perhaps not enough has been done to get beyond the signifying power of sacramental words to the doxological thrust of the prayer that completes the sacramental canon. Kristina’s critique and aspiration converges with the postmodernist concerns of Chauvin and Marion when they attend to the doxological aspect of sacrament. Conclusion In sum, Anchor Bible Dictionary theology opens up the field of sacramental studies to the experience of women and in the process introduces new methodologies and new perspectives on symbol which change the way of reading sacramental tradition. With the distinctive contributions from American and from French feminism, there is room for continuing creative dialogue. Bibliography Searching the Scriptures: A Anchor Bible Dictionary Commentary, by Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza (Crossroad/Herder & Herder, 1997). Reconstructing Christian Theology, edited by Rebecca S. Chopp and Mark Lewis Taylor (Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 1994). Reformed and Anchor Bible Dictionary: A Challenge to the Church, by Johanna W.H. Van Wijk-Bos (Westminster/John Knox Press, 1995). Womanspirit Rising: A Anchor Bible Dictionary Reader in Religion, edited by Carol P. Christ and Judith Plaskow (Harper San Francisco, 1992). Read More