Jan 30, 2023 08:19 PM
(This post was last modified: Jan 30, 2023 08:24 PM by C C.)
Did Mary have agency?
https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusiv...ave-agency
Book review of "Women and the Gender of God", by Amy Peeler
INTRO (Kirsten Sanders): Twentieth-century feminist theology sought to recover the agency of Mary, which feminists claimed had been lost in a tradition that privileged the maleness of Jesus. In local churches, this unbalanced system of value depreciated women’s participation in worship. But by deemphasizing an overly patriarchal God in favor of a powerful virgin, the church could correct course and elevate women. Such were the arguments made in the feminist theology of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Amy Peeler’s Women and the Gender of God likewise seeks to restore women’s authority through the language of women’s agency.
Peeler, an associate professor in New Testament at Wheaton College, has two primary concerns in this book. The first is how gender relates to God—whether God is male, whether God is masculine, and whether “Father” language is exclusively applied and necessary. The second concern is with Mary’s agency and whether God strengthens or undermines it. In this way Peeler adds contemporary questions of power and consent to the shopworn themes of feminist theology.
The Western theological tradition has unequivocally affirmed that God is neither male nor female, the Incarnation notwithstanding. Biological sex is a constituent fact of creatures, not of their Creator. According to Peeler, however, the Church is rife with thinkers who shirk this consensus. But examples evade her. She mentions Paul Mankowski and John Piper as culprits, but is otherwise content to tilt against imaginary interlocutors. Still, she feels the problem acutely: If God is male, then women are valued less than men. If Jesus is male, his maleness must not be seen to image God the Father, so as not to exclude women.
God’s maleness becomes of critical significance when Peeler turns to Mary’s agency. She notes that for “a number of interpreters on opposite sides of the theological spectrum” (more unnamed interlocutors), the “similar caricature” is a concern: “God is cast as the strong male opposite Mary the coerced female. She plays the negative gender stereotype of femininity.” Later feminist theorists questioned such flat-footed views of patriarchy, arguing that women’s agency often looked like the power to coerce and persuade. They conceptualized “soft power” as a foil to top-down, “patriarchal” authority. If Peeler is familiar with variants of feminism that emphasized the power inherent in pregnancy, nurture, and care, she does not let on. Instead, she tasks herself with demonstrating that God is not male and that Mary is not coerced.
The gravest problem with Peeler’s work is that she misunderstands the theological categories at stake in her analysis... (MORE - details)
Techno-Slavery: On being ruled by devices
https://americanreformer.org/2023/01/techno_slavery/
INTRO (Robert Hasler): I recently sat in on a presentation delivered by the president of a prominent evangelical seminary. The topic was discipling the next generation–what some have nicknamed “the smartphone generation.” At one point, our presenter pulled out his own device. “The next generation will not remember a time without one of these,” he said.
That Zoomers are inured to supercomputers in their pockets is not shocking. But the point is usually meant as a set-up for a more audacious–but no less fashionable–assertion: because the next generation won’t remember a time without smartphones, they can’t imagine a future without them.
Hence, the countless articles from evangelicals about discernment and technology, all assuming a kind of techno-inevitability. These typically present as a moderated position between two extremes–a “third way” between total adoption and extreme luddism. Many writers have recently questioned the third way approach to politics. It’s time to do the same with technology.
In his insightful critique of a “third-way” approach to politics, James R. Wood focuses on retrieving the telos of politics itself. The same can be done–and is being done–for technology, especially with an eye toward emerging technologies like AI. But it is also important that we apply such questions to current technologies–even devices like smartphones which so many of us have grown accustomed to. As Jon Askonas points out in his essay, “Why Conservatism Failed,” it was the adoption of new technologies like the Pill that did more to transform the household than anything else. Like a steroid to a muscle, technology causes the nascent power of the idea to explode. Transgenderism lay dormant in academic circles for a while but has now arrived in mainstream culture largely because of innovation and advancement in sex-reassignment surgeries.
That Christians today are departing from historic Christian teaching about sex, gender, and contraception in the time it takes to fill a prescription or set-up an appointment is a warning to us today. What if the next major technological shift to threaten Christian discipleship isn’t sitting in some R&D lab but in our homes right now?
What I hope to offer is a practical diagnostic for Christians that helps them discern what technologies they will and will not adopt based on the purpose of technology to support humans in their calling to live freely before God and in community with one another. I call it the Terminator Test: does it aid human life, or does it try to replace it? I recently applied it in my own life to that smartphone I’m not supposed to imagine life without. Here’s what I learned... (MORE - details)
https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusiv...ave-agency
Book review of "Women and the Gender of God", by Amy Peeler
INTRO (Kirsten Sanders): Twentieth-century feminist theology sought to recover the agency of Mary, which feminists claimed had been lost in a tradition that privileged the maleness of Jesus. In local churches, this unbalanced system of value depreciated women’s participation in worship. But by deemphasizing an overly patriarchal God in favor of a powerful virgin, the church could correct course and elevate women. Such were the arguments made in the feminist theology of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Amy Peeler’s Women and the Gender of God likewise seeks to restore women’s authority through the language of women’s agency.
Peeler, an associate professor in New Testament at Wheaton College, has two primary concerns in this book. The first is how gender relates to God—whether God is male, whether God is masculine, and whether “Father” language is exclusively applied and necessary. The second concern is with Mary’s agency and whether God strengthens or undermines it. In this way Peeler adds contemporary questions of power and consent to the shopworn themes of feminist theology.
The Western theological tradition has unequivocally affirmed that God is neither male nor female, the Incarnation notwithstanding. Biological sex is a constituent fact of creatures, not of their Creator. According to Peeler, however, the Church is rife with thinkers who shirk this consensus. But examples evade her. She mentions Paul Mankowski and John Piper as culprits, but is otherwise content to tilt against imaginary interlocutors. Still, she feels the problem acutely: If God is male, then women are valued less than men. If Jesus is male, his maleness must not be seen to image God the Father, so as not to exclude women.
God’s maleness becomes of critical significance when Peeler turns to Mary’s agency. She notes that for “a number of interpreters on opposite sides of the theological spectrum” (more unnamed interlocutors), the “similar caricature” is a concern: “God is cast as the strong male opposite Mary the coerced female. She plays the negative gender stereotype of femininity.” Later feminist theorists questioned such flat-footed views of patriarchy, arguing that women’s agency often looked like the power to coerce and persuade. They conceptualized “soft power” as a foil to top-down, “patriarchal” authority. If Peeler is familiar with variants of feminism that emphasized the power inherent in pregnancy, nurture, and care, she does not let on. Instead, she tasks herself with demonstrating that God is not male and that Mary is not coerced.
The gravest problem with Peeler’s work is that she misunderstands the theological categories at stake in her analysis... (MORE - details)
Techno-Slavery: On being ruled by devices
https://americanreformer.org/2023/01/techno_slavery/
INTRO (Robert Hasler): I recently sat in on a presentation delivered by the president of a prominent evangelical seminary. The topic was discipling the next generation–what some have nicknamed “the smartphone generation.” At one point, our presenter pulled out his own device. “The next generation will not remember a time without one of these,” he said.
That Zoomers are inured to supercomputers in their pockets is not shocking. But the point is usually meant as a set-up for a more audacious–but no less fashionable–assertion: because the next generation won’t remember a time without smartphones, they can’t imagine a future without them.
Hence, the countless articles from evangelicals about discernment and technology, all assuming a kind of techno-inevitability. These typically present as a moderated position between two extremes–a “third way” between total adoption and extreme luddism. Many writers have recently questioned the third way approach to politics. It’s time to do the same with technology.
In his insightful critique of a “third-way” approach to politics, James R. Wood focuses on retrieving the telos of politics itself. The same can be done–and is being done–for technology, especially with an eye toward emerging technologies like AI. But it is also important that we apply such questions to current technologies–even devices like smartphones which so many of us have grown accustomed to. As Jon Askonas points out in his essay, “Why Conservatism Failed,” it was the adoption of new technologies like the Pill that did more to transform the household than anything else. Like a steroid to a muscle, technology causes the nascent power of the idea to explode. Transgenderism lay dormant in academic circles for a while but has now arrived in mainstream culture largely because of innovation and advancement in sex-reassignment surgeries.
That Christians today are departing from historic Christian teaching about sex, gender, and contraception in the time it takes to fill a prescription or set-up an appointment is a warning to us today. What if the next major technological shift to threaten Christian discipleship isn’t sitting in some R&D lab but in our homes right now?
What I hope to offer is a practical diagnostic for Christians that helps them discern what technologies they will and will not adopt based on the purpose of technology to support humans in their calling to live freely before God and in community with one another. I call it the Terminator Test: does it aid human life, or does it try to replace it? I recently applied it in my own life to that smartphone I’m not supposed to imagine life without. Here’s what I learned... (MORE - details)