George,
The 'Pope's favourite rabbi', Jacob Neusner writes, " We are in for interesting times". Neusner asserted that any thoughtful Jew must conclude that Jesus was actually "abandoning the Torah" and reject him. He also suggested that insofar as Matthew's arguments are based in Jewish law, Christianity may be flawed by its own standards. Ratzinger is in full cognizance of these remarks when he blurbed Neuser's, 'A Rabbi Talks' as "by far the most important book for the Jewish-Christian dialogue in the last decade."

The transformation of the R.C. Church, post Vatican II, has a way yet to tread, but I take heart at an approach that uses both depth and reasoning surpassing a two dimensional, impotent literalism. “Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and reason properly” – Pope Benedict. I believe you also embody this senetiment George.

waterboy,
As I also stand outside of the Catholic tradition and its 'authority' your remarks have some resonance. A transformation, from within Catholicism however, is occuring. Karl Rahner reminds us that it was the image of the woman Mary that has enabled the church in past centuries to prevent society, with which it was often too uncritically identified, from setting up a purely male domination.  He adds that the church had to learn slowly and painfully, amid the changes in secular society, to give woman what is due to her by nature and by right - an historical process which is still far from complete. 

A balance (or integration) occurs, not as a feminine 'complementary underside' of “masculine” domination, but emancipating only when seen as a radical symbol of a new humanity, freed from the relationship of hierarchical power. There is a very practical application to the metaphysical statement, “...there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ.” - Galatians

Relda, George, Waterboy:

It seems to me that beneath this conversation is a basic tension which has affected our civilisation for millennia. The light of the intellect by its very nature aims to divide and thus conquer darkness: it discriminates between objects, thus establishing rigid distinctions, often formulated as polarities. Humans cannot bear for long the essential tension of these opposites, and so we eventually either deny their validity or crumple in a psycho-spiritual malaise. I believe our civilisation is now at such a point. The debate about the status of Mary in religion, as well as women in the church and the world, is a prime focus of the tension.

The angst is all about theological structure, which for so long has been based on the masculine principle. The concept of the Holy Trinity is a prime example of this. Throughout history human thought has tended to consider the odd numbers as “masculine” and the even numbers as “feminine”. Much as I value the Trinity, I wonder if human spiritual growth is now calling for a Quaternary through the inclusion of the feminine in the Deity. May this provide a healing symbol for the angst of three?

I hope no one is offended by this suggestion. I offer it simply as a possible way towards peace.

Crabsby.
Sorry, there is no room for a quaternary. Jesus is the second person of the Trinity not because he represents human masculinity but because he is the eternal Word generated from before all time began. He represents the speech of God in the world that brings forth a history out of nothing and establishes the people as the people of God. Any attempt to balance the books to include a female member would do terrible harm to the name of God. I think that it is about time the feminists accepted the fact that we receive the tradition via a patriarchal vehicle that itself is under threat from the gospel.

The other formula that has been tried to achieve gender equality in the name of God is that of Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier. I have found this formula in seventeenth century English theologians and even in the great Karl Barth. The problem is that it produces a kind of modalism in which the Son is precluded from the work of creation and the Father from the work of redemption. It also severs the link between Father and Son as one of generation and the link with the Spirit which is proceeding. The best way forward is to retrieve and develop the theology of the Trinity so that it informs us who this God is that we worship.

Peter Sellick

Sells,
One of the fallacies some feminists often use is, "If God is male, then the male is God." To see God as a Father, in other words, has confirmed the status quo of "patriarchal" society, and has sacralised the domination of women by men. It is far from clear that matriarchal religions, or religions with a mixed pantheon of gods and goddesses, were ever reflected in a higher status for women. There is, in fact, considerable evidence to the contrary.

Merely the ‘vehicle of patriarchy’, as you put it, should not offend. Equality should be ‘based on the recognition of the inherent, inalienable dignity’ of women and men – not, as many social constructionists would have it, to reject the system of gender altogether. Feminism is misguided if it overlooks or eliminates difference in favor of a sense of a common essence.

I have little problem with the definition of Jesus as the Son of God, and the consequent rider of God as His Father, which underlie all the books of the New Testament. These were certainly the fundamental dogmas of primitive Christian theology. Jesus is recorded as referring to God as his father some 170 times and at no point does Jesus imply that God is merely like a Father to him - his message is that in truth God is actually his Father. It is perhaps hardly possible to call to mind a single feminist theologian, of whatever shade or disposition, who does not find the image of the Father-God a challenge and a direct confrontation.

Rather than emasculate the ‘Trinity’ we can allow the Virgin to pro-create it. In 1950 Pope Pius XII proclaimed the dogma of the Ascension of the Blessed Virgin. Jung set high value on the dogma because of the importance it attributes to the feminine element which stands for nature and matter. The declaration of the physical ascension of Mary leads to the presumption that nature/matter can be received into the metaphysical realm. According to the earlier view, this realm was reserved only to the masculine principle, to spirit alone.

Relda, Sels et al,
What an interesting exchange of Christian perspectives!

I knew that Benedict appreciated Neusner in the book mentioned, though I did not know the details, and probably would not understand them (e.g. Matthew's arguments based in Jewish law). I somehow feel more resonant with his emphasis on the Hellenic contribution to Christianity that he developed in his misunderstood (by some Muslims) Regensburg lecture.

>> feminine 'complementary underside' of “masculine” domination <<

Complementary, as I (and Niels Bohr inspired by the wave-particle complementarity in QM) use it, is a symmetric, “horizontal“ relation, there is no “underside“ to it. “Masculine domination” is incompatible with it, although in the past this assymetry had its practical, economic, reasons in any society until very recently. I think that one should appreciate the contribution of technology to our ability to treat the female-male relation on a fairer (hence evolutioinarily more advanced) level. Emancipation should mean changing the vertical relation of domination into a horizontal relation of mutual complementarity, but it should not be equated with elimination (of the different nature of the two poles).

>> the importance it attributes to the feminine element which stands for nature and matter <<
This reminds me of my own “coat of arms” which contains the Yin-Yang symbol with a tiny cross on top of it, and an “M” underneath it. Here “M” can stand for Maria, Mater or Materia (which includes nature).

I agree with Sells on “no room for a quaternary“. There is no room for Yin-Yang in the “revealed structure” (Trinitarian) of Deity, only in our approach to it, our psychology (there was no revelation needed to tell humans there were males and females). The Trinity is perhaps better seen as related to the Aristotelean triad beauty-truth-goodness, corresponding to the three levels or aspects of our understanding of reality: experiential, rational and ethical/teleological. I wonder what those better grounded in theology might think of it.

I had an interesting conversation with an old friend last night concerning the Virgin Birth. He was telling me that at a gathering of fellow protestant Christians, the question was asked whether they thought that it would matter if the story of the Virgin birth was not true. Fifty percent of those present though that it would not affect their belief in Jesus.

On another track, it appears that no one is certain what Paul's affliction was. How would it turn out if his affliction was schizophrenia. His confrontation on the road with Jesus would have been completely real to him, even if it never happened at all.

David