Risking Proclamation, Respecting Difference. Chris Boesel
is not exhaustive.
3. Ruether, Faith and Fratricide, 246.
4. I use the rendering, antisemitism, rather than the more common, anti-Semitism, in view of the argument that the latter is based on and re-enforces the errant assumption of previous thinking that Jewish identity is fundamentally a racial category, that of the Semite. The inadequacy of this thinking is demonstrated by the trouble the Nazis had in identifying Jewish identity with any precision in the Nuremberg Laws of 1935.
5. I take my cue here from Roy Eckardt. In Christian-Jewish Dialogue he states his suspicion that even “a positive Christian theologizing of Jews cannot escape imperialism.” Christian-Jewish Dialogue, 162
6. Haynes, Reluctant Witnesses, 184, 125.
7. Metz, Emergent Church, 19. My emphasis.
8. Haynes, Reluctant Witnesses, 184. Haynes cites Eckardt in this context. See, Eckardt, Jews and Christians, 143, 146.
9. Littell, Crucifixion of the Jews, 1.
10. Ibid., 3–4.
11. Sonderegger, “Response,” 86.
12. To the issue of the ubiquitous nature of the fundamental themes articulated by Said, this is a key point of contact with feminist theory and theology; patriarchy erases women as speaking subjects. In resistance to that violation, feminist theorists like Luce Irigaray and feminist theologians like Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza ask: “what if she should speak?”
13. Said, Orientalism, 27.
14. Ibid. Said’s thesis was that “oriental,” as seen through the lens of western categories, was always in fact a particular neighbor not subsumable within those general categories, whence the violence of the West’s interpretive relation to that neighbor in their concrete particularity. Nevertheless, Said is clear that quite a number of particular neighbors and neighbor-relations fall under the umbrella of Orientalism, whereas antisemitism, as likewise an imperialistic cultural discourse complexly complicit in material damages, pertains to one particular neighbor, the Jew.
15. Said, again: “That antisemitism and, as I have discussed it in its Islamic branch, Orientalism, resemble each other very closely is a historical, cultural, and political truth that needs only to be mentioned to an Arab Palestinian for its irony to be perfectly understood.” (Orientalism, 27–28.) What Said fails to suggest is that an Israeli Jew might feel they have reason to grasp the irony here as well.
16. Arguments for the uniqueness of the Holocaust are, of course, implied here. Interestingly, there are some Jewish thinkers and theologians, such as Rubenstein and Irving Greenberg, as well as Christian theologians like Roy Eckardt, who make a double move here. They assert the uniqueness of Jewish suffering throughout the history of the Church and the West more generally. But on the basis of this uniqueness they argue for both the moral justification of the state of Israel and the revocation, or at least radical transformation, of the theological tenant of the divine election of the Jews. They see the latter as precisely that which endangers the continued survival of the Jewish people, because of the way it kindles a special antagonization for the Jewish neighbor in the heart of Christendom and the modern West.
17. Ruether, Fratricide, 239.
18. Ibid., 238.
19. Ibid., 237.
20. Rubenstein, “Some Perspectives,” 262.
21. Rubenstein, After Auschwitz, 68.
22. This point of the argument reveals how closely my project as a whole is anticipated by and resonates with that of Scott Bader-Saye in his fine work, Church and Israel after Christendom.
23. My reason for using feminine pronouns for God throughout the text is simply that I find feminist critiques of the idolatrous captivity of the Church’s theological imagination to male gendered images of God—despite the Church’s explicit theological doctrine of God, as Spirit, being neither male nor female—to be true (e.g., in the work of Ruether and Elizabeth Johnson, both of whom I engage critically in this book on other issues). It is true first and foremost of my own theological imagination; I also believe it to be true of much of the wider Church, to the extent that my experience and observation (which is by no means exhaustive) allows such a conclusion. I find the argument that said idolatrous captivity emerges and holds sway, in large part, through the Church’s long history of exclusive use of male images and pronouns for God equally convincing. It seems obvious to me, then, given that idolatry is to be avoided if we can at all help it, that the employment of alternative language and images for God constitutes a form of faithful Christian practice and theological method. Because I believe the biblical witness testifies to a God who is fundamentally personal, I choose to work within the problematically limited options of personal pronouns. I use female pronouns for God exclusively in this book, rather than alternating between male and female pronouns, because the hold of centuries of exclusive use of the male pronoun suggests to me that there are some contexts in which more radical, though always ad hoc and provisional, measures are not inappropriate. Likewise, while I believe arguments contra this usage based on, for example, the authority of biblical language for the Church (e.g., Jesus taught us to pray, saying “Father”) should not simply be dismissed, I find the urgency of idolatrous captivity the more compelling claim at this time. Finally, it is, as I have said, the critique of patri- and kyri-archy by feminist theologians like Ruether and Elizabeth Johnson that leads me to employ feminine language for God in ways they suggest. I do not, however, necessarily do so on the grounds of their constructive theological proposals. For example, Johnson argues that we need to be more responsibly aware of the limits of theological language as always no more than symbol, metaphor, analogy, etc. Yet she goes on to assert that female images for God can and should be employed theologically because they share the same natural capacity as male gendered language to function symbolically in relation to the divine. I, on the other hand—sharing Johnson’s concern to respect the radical limits of the human predicament in relation to divinity—believe that female language can and should be employed because, while the female/feminine is equally as bereft as the male/masculine with regard to any such natural capacity, God is equally as free and able to use either according to Her good pleasure.
24. This is, of course, Hegel’s interpretation of the meaning of the traditional Christian doctrine of Incarnation. It can also be found in today’s theological discourse,