The Latin for 'image of God' is 'Imago Dei.' In Greek, eikōn (image) is in the strict sense an. In the letter to the Hebrews, Christ is portrayed as the perfect manifestation of God.
- Background and research question
- Reading the text through postcolonial feminist lenses
- Postcolonial biblical hermeneutics
- Postcolonial feminist hermeneutics
- Logic of the study
- A summary of the structure of the study
The chapter also offers a feminist critique of the construction of women in the history of the Christian tradition. Chapter seven examines the perception of the image of God in the construction of gender in the Anglican Church of Kenya (ACK).
Introduction
Locating postcolonial feminist hermeneutics
- Postcolonial studies
- Postcolonial hermeneutics within biblical criticism
- Within feminist hermeneutics
- Within liberation discourses and African feminist hermeneutics
The rest of the chapter will mainly locate postcolonial biblical criticism and postcolonial feminist hermeneutics within the broader context of biblical interpretation in liberation theologies in the two-thirds world. Second, it pays special attention to the voices of the colonized and marginalized in biblical texts.
African feminist hermeneutics
In short, African feminist hermeneutics focuses on African women's experiences with religion, culture and the Bible. The skills of African women's hermeneutics will equip me to analyze women's experiences in the Roman, Jewish and Kenyan cultural contexts.
Conclusion: The significance of postcolonial feminist hermeneutics for this study
On the other hand, African feminist hermeneutics shares elements with liberation hermeneutics because of its distrust of the Bible and its strong position on the liberation of women from everything that dehumanizes her. Postcolonial feminist hermeneutics will therefore help to reveal the collusion between church and empire in the subordination of women in the history of the Christian tradition.
- Introduction
- Corinth in its Roman imperial setting
- The Roman Empire as a mirror of Roman family structure
- The role and status of a Roman woman in the family, in public and in Roman law
- The influence of Roman family ‘values’ of patronage and family hierarchy on the place and
- Roman patronage
- Family hierarchy
- Conclusion
This section examines the influence of the Roman family hierarchy on the role and status of women in Pauline congregations in general. I also examined Paul's gendered worldviews in relation to the Roman imperial context of the patronage system and the hierarchical family structure.
Introduction
A postcolonial literary reading involves an analysis of the literary constructions of the text (Dube) and how they function to justify the subjugation of women based on imperialism and culture. Therefore a literary reading will enable me to identify and examine Paul's gender constructions in the text through his rhetoric and to determine the literary unit of the text.. the imperialism of his time?. Through a postcolonial approach, I will also be able to identify some postcolonial features such as mimicry, resistance, hybridity and ambivalence in the production of the text.
The background is informative not only for our understanding of the entire Corinthian correspondence, but also for an understanding of how the text of 1 Cor. 11:1-16 fits within the context of the letter.
Background information to 1 Corinthians
- Authorship
- Occasion and purpose
- Readers
- Integrity and the unifying theme of the letter
- Summary of the structure and basic theological thought
- Paul and rhetoric in Corinthian correspondences
- Archaeological evidence of the Roman character of Corinth
However, some current researchers, including Thiselton (2000), have argued for the unity of the entire letter. The content of the letter, which is characterized by the above unifying themes, testifies to the unity of the letter. After Paul left Corinth, the church split into rival factions that threatened the unity of the body of Christ.
Paul made it clear that the resurrection of the body was a reality, but it was still a future event.
The function of Paul’s letters
The significance of Paul's letters is expressed by the pseudonymous author of 2 Peter, who refers to them as "Scriptures" (2 Peter 3:16), in which case, according to Wall, the Pauline collection serves the church as a Christian appendage to the Jewish letters. Scripture.” The importance of Paul's letters is also reflected in the fact that they were in circulation long before the collection of the New Testament in the fourth century. The late second-century Chester Beatty Papyrus (P46) also contained ten of Paul's letters. Although Paul's letters were undoubtedly apostolic, they still did not meet the criterion of catholicity and this caused problems in their canonization even at the end of the second century.
The importance of the apostles in the church is clear in texts such as 1 Cor 12:28;.
A postcolonial feminist reading of 1 Corinthians 11:1-16
- Paul’s mimicry (chapter 11 verses 1-10)
- Paul’s resistance? (verses 11-12)
- Paul’s hybridity and ambivalence (verses 13-15)
It is significant to note that Paul is writing in the context of the empire. According to Winter in the Roman tradition "the veil was the most symbolic feature of the bride's dress." A feminist critique of this limited reading of the creation stories will be given in the next chapter.
The ambivalence of the transitional manifests itself in the contradictions, especially in our text, among others.
Conclusion
Second, Paul creates difference by showing gender differentiation in the order of creation, which he uses as a divine sanction for the subordinate status of women in a way that the Genesis text does not. While gender differentiation in the creation accounts leads to equal relationships of mutual gender interdependence, Paul uses this gender differentiation to create gender hierarchy. Nevertheless, Paul's powerful voice and language, which dominate the text, show that he is actually far from dialogue.
One cannot assume ... when reading the biblical text that it gives us an accurate picture of women in the fellowship of salvation (when Jesus won universal salvation).
Introduction
This connection will be explored at the outset by tracing these views to the construction of masculinity in the ancient world. In this case, the tradition about the perception of Imago Dei in the woman as the 'Word of God' unfortunately circulated in the history of the church, through repeated quotations and interpretations from generation to generation. While the church fathers and the early traditions invoked these texts to subordinate women, in recent times Christian feminist theologians have used anthropology to deconstruct the distorted traditional perceptions of Imago Dei in woman in the writings of the fathers and to present God's image as present. confirm. in both sexes.
An examination of masculinity would provide a balanced focus and take into account not only the construction of woman, but also that of man, who, after all, has largely shaped the gendered perception of the image of God in the writings of Paul and the Church Fathers.
Construction of masculinities in the ancient world
- A brief definition of masculinities
- Conceptions of masculinities (sex and gender) in the ancient world
Male slaves, for example, fell into the category of passive people because they were at the disposal of their masters to penetrate them. For them, this uniquely masculine quality was to be used in the pursuit of the divine through the study of Torah. Furthermore, these classic texts are the product of a literate male elite, who fully accepted the values of the man's world in which they lived. at sir.
87 The Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs portrays women as "constitutionally incapable of restraining themselves" (see T.
Construction of the perception of Imago Dei in a woman in the writings of the Church
- The Fathers’ construction of the perception of Imago Dei through creation stories and 1 Cor
- The Fathers on the fall of humankind (Gen 3)
- Imago Dei through women’s modesty
- The Fathers on the role of the woman in church
- Evaluation of the Church Fathers on Imago Dei
In his view of God's image, he emphasized the equality of men and women on a spiritual level, i.e. The Bible records which gender was the first to be susceptible to sin... Therefore, the woman is the cause of the man's iniquity, not the man the man of the woman. Chrysostom highlights the views of the fathers on priestly ordination and the administration of the sacraments.
From the foregoing analysis of the Church Fathers and their conceptualization of Imago Dei, it is clear that they believed that women were excluded from the Imago Dei.
Imago Dei in the medieval period
Although Aquinas can be credited with making marriage indissoluble by giving it the status of one of the seven sacraments, a move that built self-confidence among women in the twelfth century CE, he did not reform the traditional perception of a woman's inferior status . , but also worsened it by making it a natural (biological) state, which means that it was not only a consequence of the fall. In general, although Aquinas followed Augustine's line of thought, he added some views that were more patriarchal than Augustine's thought.
Protestant reformers and Imago Dei
- Martin Luther (1483-1546)
- John Calvin (1509-1564)
According to this statement, it is clear that the missionaries wanted women to be actively involved in the affairs of the church. This meant that women could only act as lay people in the structure of the church. 188 A rural dean is the position immediately higher than that of the vicar (parish priest) in the church hierarchy.
My previous study (Mwaniki brings out the role of the MU in the church very clearly.
Imago Dei and the Church of England from the eighteenth to the twentieth century
- The church and ordination of women to priesthood
Critique of the Christian tradition by feminist scholars
- Borresen’s critique of inculturated concepts of human God-Likeness
- Feminists’ critique of Imago Dei as male
- Feminists on Imago Dei through creation stories and the story of the fall
- Feminist critique of the Christian tradition through affirmation of liberating biblical texts
- Feminist critique of the Fathers’ view of women’s dress
- Feminist critique of the Christian tradition, distinguishing sex and gender
- Feminist critique of the Fathers through distinguishing patriarchalism from patriarchy
- Feminist critique of the Christian tradition through the Trinitarian model
In this section, I will provide a feminist critique of some of the major troubling issues that have distorted the perception of God's image in a woman. One of the main criticisms leveled against the Christian tradition by feminist scholars is androcentrism. Androcentrism has developed through various doctrinal stages in relation to the concept of human likeness to God in the history of the Christian tradition.
The man is also depicted as the image of God, while the woman is excluded from the image of the divine.136.
Conclusion
In a nutshell, the chapter revealed how Paul's view of gender was built on a biased tradition of gender power relations, rather than on divine inspiration (see exegesis of 1 Cor 11:1-16 in chapter four) how this view circulated as Scripture, i.e. The result is that since the tradition that built Scripture was gender biased, Scripture and both the theology and the tradition built upon it are equally gender biased. However, it is worrying that the authority of Scripture and Tradition that has governed the theology of gender is not liberating for women.
As such, I have proposed a postcolonial feminist reading of Paul's Bible with the aim of its decolonization and depatriarchalization in order to reimagine the distorted perception of the image of God in woman.
Introduction
As this chapter will show, the denial of gifts by women, whether leadership or otherwise, is a distortion of the image of God, not only in relation to woman, but also to man and, consequently, to God himself. an image that includes both male and female. In the following, I will show how Kenyan Christians responded to pre-colonial and missionary Christianity's perception of the image of God by using post-colonial theoretical concepts of resistance, mimicry147, collaboration, survival, hybridity148. On another level, it can be understood as the selective use of the master's tools by the subordinate (e.g. the Bible) as a way of reinforcing the subordinate's identity or developing a hybrid identity.
In this chapter, depending on the context, I will use the term to mean either an act of imitation or 'using the master's tool to turn against him.'
The construction of gender through education and rituals in the missionary period
- Encounter between the CMS and the Kikuyu through missionary education
- Gender construction through rites of passage in the missionary period
155 This saying emphasizes the boy's permanence in the home and his value as the pole of the home. The goal of the missionaries and colonialists was, as we have seen so far, to 'civilize' Africans. According to Strayer, the operation "in no way met the initiation requirements of the Embu." This is because hospital operations were not carried out in a ceremonial manner as in
Firstly, it is through dowry that the wife becomes the 'property' of the husband and is treated as such.
Women in the CMS
Furthermore, apart from recommending that women serve on church councils, the conference limited women's work to the service of other women and girls. It was not even suggested that women could lead services or preach in church. Furthermore, the inability to ordain women was a major handicap to their full participation in the church.
The missionary theology of gender was also representative of the theological perceptions of gender in the Church of England, characterized by the Victorian ideology of femininity as indicated in chapter five.
- Introduction
- A brief history of ACK
- The role and status of women in ACK
- Developments in the ordination of women to priesthood in the ACK
- Debates on women’s ordination
- Women in the Mothers’ Union (MU)
- Gender representation in the organizational structure of ACK
- Chart 1 The ACK organizational structure
- Organizational structure of the ACK Diocese of Nairobi
The motion that was brought was lost in the first three synods because most of the members, who were. The leadership of the MU remained in the hands of the missionaries until 1970, when African women took over. Why prolong now an ambiguity which resulted in the first place from a necessary compromise with the society of the Roman Empire.
In these ways, ACK shows resistance to its predecessors in the history of the Christian tradition regarding the status of women in the church.
