Synopses & Reviews
Given much demand for its re-issue, we are glad to publish a second edition of this highly original and provocative book. Daphne Hampson argues that the Christian 'myth' is neither moral nortrue: untrue since there can be no such particularity as Christianity claims; immoral since that particularity roots the religion in a past patriarchal society with its imagery and values. An analysis of Christian doctrines shows them to be deeply masculinist, while the construct of 'women' present in the religion is a figment of the male imagination.
Nevertheless the author believes the Christian myth to have been a vehicle which has carried human awareness of God. The question thus arises as to how that power and love may best be conceptualised in a way that is both true to our experience and commensurate with our ethics. She suggests that understandings of the self present in feminist theory and in Schleiermacher will serve us here. Finally spiritual practices that predispose us to be open to God and that may be foundational to religion are discussed. After Christianity gives a disturbing analysis of the past and proposes creative possibilities for the future. In a new introduction Hampson reflects on her book and the response it has called forth, clarifying her position and responding to critics. Here then is a systematic theology for an age in which many who are compelled to discard the Christian story would nevertheless be spiritual persons.
Synopsis
Daphne Hampson argues that a distinction must be maintained between the Christian myth and human awareness of a dimension of reality which is God. The myth is evidently untenable: there can be no particular revelation or intervention in history. As in any other discipline, so also in theology the criterion as to what from the past remains valid and what must be discarded lies with us. The myth is moreover immoral, serving through its rootedness in the past to undergird a patriarchal order. Working from a feminist perspective Hampson analyses major paradigms of the Judaeo-Christian tradition: the conception of God; the creation thereby of a concept of woman as 'other', and the peculiarly masculinist understandings of sin, salvation, sacrifice and covenant. A chapter on 'woman' shows how devastating (and irrelevant today) the Christian construal has been. How then should we think of God, in a manner both true to the evidence and commensurate with the moral imperative of human equality? In dialogue with Schleiermacher and drawing on the evidence of religious experience Hampson undertakes an original piece of constructive systematic theology. Finally she asks after the manner of life in which such a spirituality can flourish.