Rightly understood, christology is feminism's strongest ally. The historical context for this investigation is the emergence of the “second stage” of feminism (Freidan) which challenges feminist theology to move beyond criticism to construction in dialogue and mutuality with men (Part I). A critical review of feminist christological work (Daly, Heyward, Ruether) points towards the liberal view of Jesus and a “therapeutic” view of soteriology. In view of the methodological elusiveness and the inescapable maleness of the historical Jesus and in view of the radical nature of sexism as systemic evil, these biases may indicate weaknesses (Part II). Drawing upon some recent reformulations of the trinity (Jenson, Moltmann, Congar), the paper proposes that a trinitarian christology will directly address the soteriological requirements of feminist theology and will provide a model of God which centers in mutuality, equality and freedom, and thus avoids oppressive, male qualities (Part III). Finally the implications of this christology are drawn to the practicalities of the feminist/masculinist debate.

The Lutheran formula “simul Justus et peccator” originally applied to the individual Christian believer. However, it can also apply to the ecclesial community of believers and it can also have ecumenical dimensions and consequences. This article investigates these dimensions and consequences in view of the discussions which were occasioned by Vatican II.

Both Native American shamans and mind-cure practitioners dispel disease by visualizing it in symbolic form and enable recovery by invoking symbols of well-being. This paper shows how comparative study of shamanism and mind-cure furthers understanding of the techniques of symbolic healing characteristic of each religious tradition. Mind-cure techniques of hypnotic suggestion illumine the Native American idea that prayers, songs, and stories are spiritual forces. Conversely, the performing arts practiced by Native American shamans contribute to further understanding of the effective healing techniques practiced by Mary Baker Eddy and her teacher, Phineas P. Quimby. The paper also comments on the implications of studying particular forms of Christian theology and practice, such as the mind-cure movement, in light of shamanism.

This article attempts a brief sketch of the modern Jewish views of women. To explain modernity, however, it must first survey the major biblical and talmudic themes. Although both the Bible and talmudic materials are densely layered, one quickly sees that the dominant, official texts gave modern Jewish women an ambitious heritage. Only with the Breslav Conference of Reform Judaism in 1846 did a clear call for Jewish women's equality with men in institutional religion sound forth. Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati became an American rallying point among the Reformed, but the Conservative and Orthodox hung back. In recent times sympathetic religious lawyers have attempted halakahic reforms, but Jewish feminists feel that much remains to be done in such realms as divorce, religious ritual, and Israeli civil law.

Both inside and outside the classroom, many discussions of ethical topics reach an impass because of an underlying ethical subjectivism. This essay examines the limitations, discoveries, and contributions of four forms of this subjectivism: (1) liminal egoism, (2) emotivism, (3) privatism, and (4) relativism. The essay critiques popular expressions of the assumption that one cannot make arguments about the objective rightness or wrongness of human action. It argues that the positive emphases of each form can be included in an objective ethic. Such an ethic is stimulated by subjectivism to affirm (1) the uniqueness of the self, (2) the character-forming and cognitive nature of the emotions, (3) the proper place of subsidiarity, and (4) the legitimacy of certain types of pluralism.

Genuine objectivity, says Bernard Lonergan, is the fruit of authentic subjectivity. Certainly, the two are closely linked. In this essay, I propose that authentic subjectivity consists, not in overcoming the particularities of one's subjective standpoint in order to embrace a hypothetical universal viewpoint shared in common with other individuals, but in getting more deeply in touch with the unique particularity of one's own perspective in order better to appreciate both the similarities with and the differences from the standpoints of other individuals. Genuine objectivity, then, consists in recognizing that there neither is nor ever will be a universal standpoint. All standpoints by definition are particular. This is not to deny, of course, that at any given moment there is an objective state of affairs, quite apart from any one's subjective perception of it, but only to affirm that no one (not even God) has a totally objective grasp of that same state of affairs.

The intensified efforts in recent years to bring definitional clarity to the field of religious education involve not simply elucidating the role of theology but also exploring the function of religious studies. A proposal is made in this essay that both theology and religious studies make different and necessary contributions to religious education, though neither subsumes it. The context for this argument is established by means of an initial review of the literature of religious education regarding the varied perspectives on the role of theology and then by attention to the relationship of theology and religious studies. The concluding section consists of three propositions specifying a conceptualization of the field of religious education with distinct functions for theology and religious studies.

The present essay distinguishes two ways to “settle” the problem of evil, “defense” and “theodicy,” as practiced in contemporary Christian philosophical theology. It argues that Christian theology can defend Christian belief from the charge of inconsistency, but that when it attempts to explain why and how God permits or wills evil in his world, it stumbles over denying the reality of evil or the goodness of God. The essay concludes by arguing that the Christian theologian cannot and should not attempt to make Christianity plausible by constructing theodicies but should concentrate on other methods of demonstrating the plausibility of Christianity.

Without an appreciation of symbol, one cannot hope to grasp concepts such as revelation and incarnation which are foundational for theology and for other varieties of religious thought. Unfortunately, the undergraduate years find our students at an age when they are natural demythologizers: impatient and exasperated with symbols. Are we wasting our breath in trying to teach them disciplines which are constitutionally disabled from understanding? This article suggests that human cognition must develop through the successive stages of literal, conventional, critical, and conjunctive understanding. It recommends strategies for helping students move from conventional to critical thinking so as to prepare the way for conjunctive thought beyond age thirty.

As theologians are increasingly employing the social sciences in their work, it is incumbent upon them to examine the way the term religion is employed in these disciplines. This paper explains the common types of definition employed (the substantive and functional varieties) and critiques each from the perspective of contemporary theology. Both are found deficient in ways highly significant for theologians. This paper argues that it is inappropriate to attempt to establish any single definition of religion as normative. While the posture adopted appears to lay to rest any attempt to generate “grand theory” about religion it is not inconsistent with the canons of science as understood in current philosophy of science discourse.

When I undertook to teach a course on spiritual direction in 1976 I discovered that there were practically no books in English available on the subject. John McNeill's classic work in comparative history had been reprinted. Merton's little essay, already fifteen years old and more monastic in approach than was suitable for my students was still available. Jean Laplace's substantively excellent, but somewhat old-fashioned and clerical, treatment of the subject had just been translated from the French. With these exceptions, almost all useful material on the topic of spiritual direction was in the form of articles on specific aspects of this ministry appearing with increasing frequency in periodicals devoted to spirituality and religious life.

With the appearance the following year of Kenneth Leech's very fine study, Soul Friend, perhaps still the best overall treatment available, a veritable publishing phenomenon began. In the last five years dozens of full-length books and a number of long essays as well as various collections of articles on spiritual direction have appeared. In what follows I will attempt to describe and evaluate this phenomenon by briefly commenting on a number of recent books on the subject of spiritual direction.

This article explores modern psychoanalytic object relations theory as a potential resource for Christian spirituality in the development of an integrated theological and psychological model of the self. The necessity for such a model is first suggested by considering some potential dangers within the current revival of modes of “imageless” prayer. A suggestive effort that has already been made to construct a “spectrum” model of self development that combines psychoanalytic insight with the psychology of Theravada Buddhism is then examined. The final section assesses the interpretive power of a similar model worked out for the distinctive religious vision of Christian spirituality.

As I was about to begin my teaching career at Arizona State University in 1977, I shared with one of my colleagues at another university that I was going to teach a course on women in the Christian tradition. He jokingly responded, “Well, that should take about ten minutes. What are you going to do the rest of the semester?” Accepting what I perceived as a well-intentioned challenge, I have occasionally sent him a syllabus for one of the two courses on women and religion which I regularly teach in alternate semesters. Although continuing research, new publications, and insights gleaned from previous classes demand that I change the courses slightly each semester, a perennial frustration remains: the sixteen-week semester is barely adequate for an in-depth study of relevant reading materials, pertinent issues raised, and questions demanding response.

The two courses I alternately teach are “Women in the Christian Tradition” and “Women, Religion, and Social Change” (World Religions). The first I have taught regularly since my arrival at Arizona State (my area is History of Christianity). The second developed as a consequence of a stimulating and provocative team-teaching effort with Diana Paul at Stanford University where I was invited to teach for Winter and Spring quarters, 1980-81. We team-taught the course, “Women, Religion, and Social Change.”

The incorporation of feminist issues and feminist methods and sources into a Christian ethics curriculum is at once a simple and a complex enterprise. It is simple because a feminist approach to ethics can be made explicit at almost every juncture in the curriculum. It is complex because feminist ethics is, like most other general approaches to ethics, pluralistic. Moreover, as a systematic discipline it is in its beginning stages, and there are few comprehensive sources to which students can turn for analytical foundations. The difficulties which students and teachers face in building a syllabus for feminist ethics, however, are not essentially different from those we confront in much of the teaching of ethics. That is, controversy demands the use of a variety of sources; most of the appropriate readings are to be found in short essays rather than in book-length treatments; and since ethics is in many respects a derivative discipline, significant materials must be drawn from many other areas of learning, including theology, biblical studies, and the behavioral, social, and natural sciences.

Trying to answer the question, “How can a teacher of systematic theology incorporate the insights provided by feminist thinkers?”, we faced several major problems and made a few rather arbitrary choices. Ultimately it is impossible to separate systematic theology from biblical or historical studies or distinguish it satisfactorily from the study of spirituality or morality. What we say here, then, must be complemented by the other essays in this series. Besides, the impact of feminist thought on Christian theology is not a peripheral or additional thing; incorporating feminist theology into systematics does not mean only an addition of topics. Rather, the research and reflection of feminist scholars demand revision of our basic approach to doing theology; they recast the basic evidence on which we must reflect; they challenge the presuppositions and methodology with which we previously approached the classic topics of theology.

What we are talking about is not how to teach a special branch or brand of theology, but simply teaching systematic theology more adequately and critically, trying to lead students to understand accurately and personally what is meant by “grace” and “salvation” and “Jesus as the Christ” and “Church” and “God.” In our trying to reach this goal, present-day feminist thought has proved a rich and indispensable resource—this we will try to explain in relation to four large areas of what generally is thought of as “systematic theology.” Rather than sketch a course in “Systematic Theology from a Feminist Perspective,” which would be both interesting and valuable, we will try to indicate ways in which the entire content of theology needs to be changed by feminist understandings.

“Religious Myths and Rituals,” a course I teach once a year, is a lower division undergraduate course designed to introduce students to the academic study of religion. Its purpose is to acquaint students with the wide range of scholarly views regarding the meanings, origins, and functions of religion, the mythic and ritual components of religion, the widespread presence of religious symbols, the metaphoric character of religious language, diverse crosscultural images of transcendence, sacrality, and the like. In order to introduce the theoretical materials or to test or illuminate them, we focus on the specific religious expressions of American Indian and African tribal societies. Although examples from other religions are cited in the course of class lectures, these two tribal cultural settings serve as our primary reference points for understanding the phenomenon of religion.

On the course syllabus and early in the quarter, I articulate the following questions as a way of describing the task of the course: What is religion? What are the origins and functions of religion? What can we learn about myths and mythologies and the functions they have in human experience? Why do rituals arise in human behavior? (How do they take shape and what are they for?) Do any of the myths and rituals of traditional, tribal religions have any bearing on contemporary American life? How might we discern the meaning of religious symbols? What are some of the predominant myths and rituals that both reflect and affect our own lives as individuals or as a people (as Christians, Jews, Buddhists, atheists—as students, Americans, Westerners, as women or men)?

What does it mean to be a Christian in today's business world? It is this question which provides the focus for a course I teach called “Modern Decision Making in the Christian Tradition.” The course is designed for college juniors and seniors who are interested in exploring the implications of Christian faith for a professional life. Students are exposed to the flaws in Adam Smith's famous apology for the capitalist economy and offered an approach to working in the system and reforming it from a Christian standpoint.

It has been my experience that most students in the course are serious about their Christian faith, that is, they go to church on Sunday and they strive to live the sort of life that they understand to be Christian. They are largely from good homes and have learned the value of friendship and love from dedicated parents. Most of them, however, have not been challenged to think through the implications of their Christian faith for their life in the business world or in the wider social order.

While they may be models of compassion and generosity to those in their immediate circles, many students today have a blindspot for responsibilities in the socio-political order. In the traditional vocabulary, they are strong on charity but weak in justice. Justice in our time is often equated with “law and order,” the quid pro quo's that insure that we each get what we deserve. One of the objectives of the course is to widen the horizons of the students so that they come to see more adequately what is entailed in calling oneself “Christian.” To begin, I have them reflect on sections of “Justice in the World,” the document issued by the Roman Synod of Bishops in 1971.

John Dunne's books A Search for God in Time and Memory and The Way of All the Earth describe and employ a method which their author calls “passing over and coming back,” in order to attain and lead his readers into a sympathetic understanding, first of other lives and second of other religions. These and Dunne's other books are generally taken to be among the major theological works of recent years, but teachers of theology have tended to find them forbidding as texts for undergraduates. In this paper I wish to discuss some techniques which I have employed to assist undergraduates not only to read Dunne's books but to engage personally in the process of passing over and coming back. I wish to go further than that, though. It seems to me that the techniques I am presenting are applicable to other texts besides Dunne's, and I want to stress that broader application. It also seems to me that there are some real problems, especially moral problems, in engaging in “passing over and coming back” in a classroom setting, and I want to set out something of what those problems are, to discuss the extent to which I cope or fail to cope with them, and to invite readers' reflections on how better to cope with them. Because I am offering reflections on my own experience (including unsolved problems) as a teacher and not trying to put forward a general theory of any kind, I am keeping this paper in the first person singular throughout.