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THEO-161 God and Gender
Fall only
This course focuses on the issue of gender in our understanding of God--the names we apply to God and the images we have of God. We shall undertake three main tasks simultaneously:
(1) A critical task. How did the transcendent God of the western religious tradition come to be understood as masculine? What do we really mean when, for example, we call God "father" or image God as "king"? How are our understandings of authority and power related to our understandings of gender? (2) A historical task. Are there other images of God in the tradition that can be retrieved? Do the "classics" of the western tradition really support the "masculinized" God that much of our society has come to take for granted? (3) A constructive task. How should language be applied to God? Do we really mean to claim that God has gender? What do we mean when we say God is both transcendent and personal? Through a close reading of historical and contemporary texts, mostly in the Christian tradition, we shall trace the issue of the divine gender as it has been understood throughout the centuries in the western religious tradition and as it relates to the major Christian doctrines of creation, incarnation, Christology, redemption, the Trinity, and Mariology. Although the majority of the course focuses on the western Christian tradition, students are encouraged to use the ideas and methods they learn here to explore other religious traditions.
Credits: 3.00
Prerequisites: None
Course syllabi
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Fall '08:
Lamm, J
(description)
Additional syllabi may be available in prior academic years.
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