Doctorate Theses

Permanent URI for this collection

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1

What Does it Mean for a Woman to be Created in God's Image?
(2013-05-02) Abetz, Katherine J.
In contrast with key traditional as well as recent feminist understandings which, in different ways, present a disembodied understanding of how humanity is made in God’s image, the thesis argues that the other-centered character of sexual differentiation is patterned on Trinitarian interpersonal relations. The key to gender is relationship. Women symbolize Christ’s feminine persona towards the Father while also entering the reversed priority of Wisdom Incarnate and human mother. On the assumption that the concept of the image of God implies the possibility (albeit limited) of access to divine mystery, the imago Dei is understood as ‘visible symbol’ of the Godhead, in a sense distinct from spiritual access to God yet grounded in the epistemology of covenantal relationship between God and humanity and the analogical capacity of theological language. The complex pattern of the imago Dei precludes anthropomorphic projection with implications for the nature of meaning, identity and linguistic reference.