Introduction

Abstract

The introduction to the special issue situates the five following essays in the context of historical and contemporary theological reflection on maternality. It addresses the fraught connection between sexuality and maternality in the Christian theological imagination and argues that the maternal body has often functioned as a bridge between the opposed arenas of Word and flesh, God and humanity, and eternity and time. The introduction concludes by using the figure of the Virgin Mary as a lens to consider the theological themes of birth, grief, the incarnation, sacrifice, and Eucharist. Mary’s body, site of the incarnation, allows connection, mediation, contiguity, and congress to occur. As such, it also functions as a bridge between theology and sexuality.     

The Metaphorical Conception of Scientific Explanation: Rereading Mary Hesse

Summary  In 1997, five decades after the publication of the landmark Hempel-Oppenheim article “Studies in the Logic of Explanation”([1948], 1970) Wesley Salmon published Causality and Explanation, a book that re-addresses the issue of scientific explanation. He provided an overview of the basic approaches to scientific explanation, stressed their weaknesses, and offered novel insights. However, he failed to mention Mary Hesse’s approach to the topic and analyze her standpoint. This essay brings front and center Hesse’s approach to scientific explanation formulated in the 1960s and argues that rereading Hesse’s account one can overcome the criticisms addressed towards another influential theory of explanation that of Bas van Fraassen’s. Furthermore, it could bring the traditional philosophy of science into a fruitful conversation with science and technology studies and gender studies in science, technology and medicine.     

Eve and the Serpent: A Rational Choice to Err

In dealing with inexplicable disaster, like the untimely death of a child in a hospital, we increasingly turn to the justice system for accountability and retribution. While seemingly sensible, criminalizing human error has a range of negative consequences. But it does offer “good” narratives of failure as the result of human fault—even at the cost of guilt. Such narratives allow us to pinpoint a cause: people made a rational choice to err and should be punished. This allows us to imagine ourselves in control over random, meaningless events. This paper traces Judeo–Christian roots of such regulative ideals in Western moral thinking, by examining the Genesis account of Eve and the Serpent, and St. Augustine’s interpretation of it. Sidney Dekker (Ph.D., The Ohio State University, 1996) is currently Professor of human factors and system safety at Lund University in Sweden, and specializes in human error and reactions to failure.     

Eve in early Reformation exegesis: the case of Iohannes Oecolampadius

Abstract

Iohannes Oecolampadius stood at the forefront of the Reformation in Basel. He not only worked tirelessly for the reform of the city's churches, but also authored pioneering evangelical works of theology and exegesis. The interpretation of Eve found in his late lectures on Genesis showcases both a new emphasis on Eve's goodness and original equality with Adam, as well as a parallel insistence on her subordination to her husband after the Fall. His conception of husband and wife as partners of equal dignity on the path toward salvation moves in the direction of companionate marriage, but it stops short of calling for women's equality in the public sphere.     

Mary and the Vocation of Philosophers

Pope John Paul II, in Fides et ratio #108, states that there is a deep harmony between the vocation of true philosophy and the Blessed Virgin Mary. This intriguing claim, so different from the usual link of Mary with faith, is developed in this article. Drawing analogical implications from selected events in Mary's life, two questions will be asked: How do philosophers "philosophize in Mary?;" and how could this way of philosophizing help us today to renew the vocation to be a philosopher? The following authors are considered: Thomas Aquinas, Edith Stein, Jacques and Raïssa Maritain, Bernard Lonergan, Josef Ratzinger, Mary Daly, Robert Sokolowski, Norris Clarke, Søren Kierkegaard, Karol Wojtyla, John Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Judy Chicago, and John Henry Newman.     

Biblical mothers as images of the Church

Among the many images and symbols of the Church which the church Fathers used, biblical mothers had an important role. Some of these images, such as Mary as an image of the Church, became widespread and have influenced later Christian theology and iconography. In this article, both the development and different applications of these images will be explored. How and to what purpose these images were used in the Early Church will also be studied. Among the topics dealt with by using these images were the origin, age, character and purpose of the Church, as well as its relation to several ‘others’ (the Jews, the schismatics and the heretics). In modern ecclesiological discussions, especially of Eve and Mary as images of the Church, the role of the Church in salvation, as well as the communal interpretation of biblical mothers, are relevant.     

Portrait of Our Lady: Mary, Piero, and the Great Mother Archetype

Mary the God-bearer is explored symbolically from the perspective of the archetype of the Great Mother as described by Carl Jung and Erich Neumann. Drawing from primordial and collective origins, the dark and the chthonic as well as the light and spiritual aspects of the archetype are considered as represented in the work of fifteenth century Italian painter Piero della Francesca. Piero's images of Mary incorporate body as well as spirit, power as well as vulnerability, death, as well as life and rebirth. The feminine presence of the Great Mother archetype creates a powerful dynamic on an unconscious level in both men and women that culminates in radical transformation.     

Gender and Sexuality in the Garden of Eden

Abstract

Various attempts have been made to argue that the plain meaning of the story of the Garden of Eden in Genesis 2-3 supports a feminist, or at least a woman-friendly, understanding of the gender and sexual relationships between Adam and Eve. I counter that these arguments are not convincing and are hard to square with the biblical text, by considering four central elements in the story: (1) The sexual nature of ha'adam, Adam/ the earthling at the start of our story; (2) God's ‘curse’ of Eve; (3) The meaning of the woman being a ‘helper’ to Adam; and (4) Adam's naming of the woman. I conclude that the most plausible meaning of these chapters is that Adam dominates Eve sexually and otherwise from the very moment of Eve's creation.     

Mary, the Reformation and some Scots!In Memory of John Macquarrie (1919–2007)

Since Vatican II great progress has been made towards an ecumenical understanding and appreciation of our Blessed Lady, even as there has been a certain development in Catholic understanding. This essay looks briefly at Reformation mariologies, those of Luther, Calvin and Zwingli before moving on to consider three Scots: John Knox, Edwin Muir and John Macquarrie. Arguably, John Macquarrie has shown one of the most careful retrievals of Marian theology, not least in his  Principles of Christian Theology  and  Mary for All Christians.  His final mariological sounding took him back to his Celtic roots, and is summarized here. John Macquarrie died in 2007, and this essay is dedicated to his memory.     

Wayne G. Rollins' Soul and Psyche: An Appreciation

Professor Wayne G. Rollins has written a remarkably important book on the history of the interface between psychological and biblical studies. It is called Soul and Psyche: The Bible in Psychological Perspective. It is so comprehensive that it reaches from the words of Jesus of Nazareth to the models of Kohut and Winnicott, from the First Century to the Twenty-First, from Freud to Fowler and beyond. He definitively addresses the full range of issues relating to the psychological critique of the Bible and the history of Biblical Psychology.     

Luther and Gender: Shifts in Paradigms and Orientations

Considering the tenderness and detail with which Luther attends to matters “all about Eve” in his Genesis lectures—and how he treats the matriarchs in the Genesis narrative—we can say that gender and women constitute a central interest for the reformer. He developed, in his context, a new theological anthropology that valued women's biological distinction, difference within sameness in creation, and absolute equality in redemption and callings. While his gender ideology is a work in progress, Luther's instincts are modern, if not even feminist, when placing the uterus at the central place of the delivery of the saving incarnate Word.     

Psychoanalysis, Parents, and God: Julia Kristeva on Subjectivity and the Imaginary Father

This article examines Julia Kristeva's theories of language, subjectivity, and faith. Kristeva's perspectives contain surprising resources for feminist theologians concerned about gender-inclusive language for God. Her concept of the Imaginary father offers a way to understand how God-language functions for person in relation to their subjectivity. Such an understanding can assist feminist thinkers to move beyond contemporary stalemates in theological appropriations of object relations theory, toward new feminist perspectives on subjectivity and new practices for transforming gendered language about God.     

Sola Scriptura: Strengths and Challenges

When Luther's notion of sola Scriptura is nuanced and properly understood, it is engaging and true in its assertions. However, in today's world, the use of the expression sola Scriptura may be more problematic than helpful. This point is argued for three reasons: Lutheran relationships with Catholics; the rise of American fundamentalism; and the parallel rise of “nones,” that largely young group of agnostics (sometimes atheists) not affiliated with any organized religion. By considering these issues, we can see how the notion still has relevance for theology and for the broader church, and how this notion helps us to preach, teach, and live the gospel in this time and place.     

Conversation analysis and religion: Practices of talking about Bible texts in Seventh-day Adventist Bible study

The purpose of this article is to show what ethnomethodology and, especially, conversation analysis as methods have to offer to the study of Bible reading. The methodology of conversation analysis is compared with the methods of the ethnography of reading. The conversation analytical perspective is demonstrated through examining some recurrent practices of talking about Bible texts in Seventh-day Adventist Bible study, namely, recontextualizing words and expressions, and inferences about the characters and events in the texts. The article shows how interactional practices are analyzed as both situated and recurrent. In the concluding section a suggestion is made for how the perspectives of ethnography and conversation analysis can be combined. The data consists of audio-recordings of actual Bible study sessions in a Seventh-day Adventist church in Finland.     

Bodies against the law: Abu Ghraib and the war on terror

In this essay, I argue that the contemporary notion of law has been reduced to regulations and disciplinary codes that do not and cannot give meaning to our emotional lives and moral sensibilities. As a result, we have increasing numbers of what I call “abysmal individuals” who suffer from a split between law—broadly conceived as that which gives form and structure to social life—and personal embodied sensations of pain and pleasure. My attempt to understand the place of Abu Ghraib within American culture leads to an analysis of our valorization of innocence and ignorance that not only becomes the grounds on which we morally (if not legally) excuse abusive behavior as “fun,” but also becomes part of the justification for condoning some forms of violence while condemning others. In addition, I argue that the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate violence trades on underlying assumptions about the relationship between culture and nature, technology and bodies, wherein bodies are imagined as natural and outside of the realm of law.

Sola Scriptura—A Hermeneutical Impossibility and a Doctrinal Necessity: Twenty‐One Theses

The following theses represent an attempt to delineate some of the contemporary basic conditions for maintaining the use of the sola Scriptura in the Lutheran churches. This must, I argue, be done without using it as a means for ignoring other types of information and experience than that which is contained in the Scriptures. I argue that sola Scriptura formulates what is necessary for salvation, but cannot be used to delineate or present all information that is necessary to live in the contemporary world and interpret all contemporary experience.     

A Rose Blooms in the Winter: The Tradition of the Hortus Conclusus and its Significance as a Devotional Emblem

The hortus conclusus, or the “garden enclosed,” is a motif of biblical origin that images the Virgin Mary as a cloistered garden. Gaining popularity in the early medieval period, the Marian hortus conclusus remained the property of the Catholic church after the Reformation. There it briefly thrived, reaching its apogee in the early modern period as the eponymous subject of Henry Hawkins’ emblem book, Partheneia Sacra. The Virgin in (and as) the garden still lives a half‐life today, continuing to appear without our recognizing it in medieval and Renaissance artwork, in hymns, in the names of flowers, and in prayers. Where it is known, the Marian hortus conclusus is usually perceived as a Catholic object of adoration, but its enduring nature suggests that it holds promise as a catholic subject of devotion as well.     

Wisdom's Information: Rereading a Biblical Image in the Light of Some Contemporary Science and Speculation

The biblical image of Wisdom as the power who "orders all things well" in nature and in human life can be read in the light of contemporary information theory. Some current scientific speculation offers an interpretation of reality as a vast information-processing system, in which informational situations are continuously transformed through algorithmic operations. This interpretation finds a metaphysical counterpart in the distinction between "nature natured" and "nature naturing" in the philosophical theology of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. This confluence of religious, metaphysical, and scientific imagery suggests a picture of the world in which the processes of "nature naturing,""human humaning," and "God Godding" inform and recur in each other.