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Women Doing Theology
Sharon Rose Joy Ruiz-Duremdes
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Learning Task: Go around and very quickly tell the group who, in your perception, is a theologian. When one says, Dr. So and So is a theologian, what images are conjured in your mind? Let's paint a word picture of a theologian. 1. Write words/phrases on the blackboard. 2. Comment on the words as regards the common conception of theologian. |
We have come together to discover what women are and should be doing in a field that was, for a long time, the area of responsibility of men... educated men, at that. I wish to approach the topic by defining the terms.
I. What is Theology?
At the risk of oversimplifying matters, I would like to say that theology is "God-talk...talk about God." According to a Filipino churchperson: "Theology is not a tool for constructing an accurate, objective, and true understanding of one's self and the world. Theology is supremely interested in asking the question where and why people are suffering and what possible means are available in removing that suffering." Now, why do we want to know the
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truth about God? So that we can try as best as we can to follow what Jesus did within our own socio-political context. Therefore theology is, on the one hand, a commentary about God's working; in history.
It used to be that this God-talk was merely a discourse discussion on the nature of God. Theologians painstakingly attempted to answer the question: Who is God? So they describe God's personality, attributes, qualities. We were taught that God is omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, etc. We were told in Sunday School that God was up there in heaven sitting on a throne high and lifted up.
But our understanding of the omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent God did not change things for people. They were still poor¦ deprived and oppressed.
And then gradually, the question changed. From "Who is God?" we began to ask: "Where is God?" There was a shift from nature of God to locus of God (God's location). Is God in heaven, somewhere beyond the blue? or is God down here in the slums, in the prostitution houses, in the countryside? When we asked about God's address, that started a series of other questions. That led us to further ask: On which side is God? On the side of the rich or the side of the poor? Why has God chosen to take that side? What is God doing? What does God expect us to do?
It used to be that this God-talk was all talk. Theologians capitalized on John 1:1 – "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God." The Word. They stopped at verse 1. And so they wrote words and words and words about God. They filled whole libraries with volumes upon volumes of God-talk. And they played with words to confuse the ordinary church-goer. They invented words: ecclesiology, soteriology, hermeneutics, eschatology, etc.
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But those "high falluting" words, which I suspect even God could not understand, did not change things for the people. They were still poor, deprived and oppressed.
And then some people reading John 1:1 went on to read the rest of the verses of the chapter until their eyes rested on verse 14: "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among people full of grace and truth..." This set a whole new train of thinking – the Word became a person (the person was named Jesus Christ) and that person became active in history. So theology was no longer mere talk. It became action. That is why today, we are here not so much to theologize or talk about God but to learn how to do theology.
What do you do when you do theology? I have but one point to make: To do theology is to make God exist. Jeremiah 31:33 talks about a new covenant with the people: "I will become their God and they shall be my people." And the rest of the verses in the chapter speak about a condition of justice and prosperity. The heart of the matter is that persons will not have Yahweh as their God unless they love their neighbor and achieve justice completely on the earth. God will not be God until then. God will only be a God in a world of justice and equality. Therefore, if contemporary society still reeks with injustice, then God does not exist yet. We still have the task of making God exist. In other words. God is a God of justice and love. God can only be experienced most pro- foundly in this atmosphere. For as long as justice and love do not as yet exist, it will be most difficult, if not impossible, to experience God. Therefore, to do theology is to help bring about the conditions that will make God (who is just and loving) real to people.
However, our theme says: Women Doing Theology. The verb is in its present progressive form. Therefore, it is ongoing; it never ends. This only tells us that doing theology is a process and if it is a process, then theology is done within the interplay of historical forces at a given time. Therefore, theology is not a finished for-
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mulation. Because it is set within a particular context, the theologian is aware of the temporariness of his/her pronouncements. Theologians are open to the possibility that God may change.
We recall that when the disciples of John the Baptist went to ask Jesus if he was indeed the Messiah, Jesus answered: "The lame walk, the blind see, the prisoners are released and the gospel is being preached to the poor." Here we see Jesus describing himself in terms of what he does. When he was asked WHO he was, he did not answer: "I am Jesus. I am the Son of God. I am the Messiah." He identified himself as one who was doing thing for the victims of oppression.
Also after his resurrection, he chose to identify himself to the doubting disciples through the scars or the nailprints in his hands and the wound in his side – these were marks of torture to prove that he was engaged in something which the ruling class did not, approve of. Moreover, the scars were evidence that he, too, was. a victim of oppression. As such, he was definitely on the side of the victims.
Doing theology, then, "presupposes committed action, involvement, participation in some form of struggle, a mission, a task, in which the more 'reflective' aspects of theology are practiced, tested and lived." (Rebecca Asedillo)
Finally, what are women up to when they do theology?
1. They embark on a pilgrimage toward feminization... knowing who we are, recognizing and appreciating our being, our sexuality, our identity as persons. This awareness frees us from guilt and fear and makes us eager to be creative... to share ourselves with others... to push our agenda even as we see to it that these agenda take on programmatic expressions. We must leam to reject the centuries-old ideology that sex discrimination is a natural
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"part of life." We need to affirm the validity of women's perception of reality, definition of the world, reading of history and interpretation of human experience.
2. They bring integration into theology which means questioning dualisms and dichotomies in theological tradition: body-spirit; darkness-light; weak-strong; emotional-rational. When we look at these dualisms, we discover that the tendency is for women to be stereotyped as body, darkness, weak, emotional. By asserting recognition and participation in the mainstream of not only theological discourse but in community building as well, feminist theology promotes full humanity.
3. They reflect the perspective from the underside... the poor and the oppressed. It is only natural for women are the poor and the oppressed.
4. They help to liberate men from a purely male perspective of history. (This is the greatest service they can give their male counterparts.)
5. They put theology at the service of the people's struggle for justice and peace because their perspective is liberational.
Let me close with a reminder from the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians: "Unless the grave and ongoing injustice against women is acknowledged in people's action and unless the women's perspective becomes an integral part of theological reflection, there can be no relevant renewal, no genuine social transformation, no holistic human liberation." I even go further and say: The survival of the planet earth is dependent on the dismantling of patriarchy.
