This study seeks to articulate a redemptive incarnational Christology
in terms of the repressed bodiliness of women. In reality, the
lack of the discourses of body as the ‘blind spot’ of theology represses
and hides the generative role played by the feminine. As feminist
theorists argue, this repression results from the fear that an acknowledgment
of women’s originating productivity might undermine the
legislative authority of the one who rules. Methodo-logically, the
bridge I am reinforcing between theology and recent feminist theories
here allows me both to criticize the conventional doctrine of incarnation
and to pursue a possibility of women’s experience of an infinite
effect of the incarnation.
The Word became flesh, but the frozen Word of God in the
abstract and substantialized Western doctrinal incarnation, which is
devoid of body, bodily reality, relationality, and thereby the room for
women’s embodiment, occludes present soteriological experiences. In
classical accounts of the Christological incarnation, the relationality
seems to be limited to the two, the Son and the Father, the patriarchal
and patrilineal relations. Furthermore, the traditional emphasis of
atonement Christology obscures the incarnate presence of God,
reducing the incarnation to a kind of precondition for the crucifixion.
Throughout the signification process, the body which Christ received
from the mother is symbolically sacrificed on the cross. The image of
the crucified body, which tends to associate with a denial of bodily
drives, denotes only a celestial redemption. That is, the dualistic
representations of the incarnation narrow down Christ’s salvation to
the sacrifice of Christ’s body. Women are in a need of a redemptive
doctrine of the incarnation which transfigures their repressed bodiliness
and transforms their suffering into a creative vision.
Correspondingly, my feminist theological understanding of the
incarnation resists the tendency of self-denial and self-e f f a c e m e n t
within women. For women, I think, the incarnation of God is known
through redemptive embodiment of women not through abstract doctrinal
Christology. The so-called objective, rational, and true doctrine
of incarnation does not exist as such, but rather the incarnation of God
is hermeneutically re-realized within the process of women’s
redemption. Thus, the embodiment of redemption signifies a ‘retrieving
the wounded body,’ that is, a ‘becoming body.’ With this regard,
this study argues that the incarnational Christology is a credo that
needs ongoing interpretative participation and engagement. Resisting
a metaphysical tendency to conceptualize the incarnate presence of
God, this study rehabilitates women’s redemptive embodiment within
the Christian doctrine of Incarnation.
This study seeks to articulate a redemptive incarnational Christology
in terms of the repressed bodiliness of women. In reality, the
lack of the discourses of body as the ‘blind spot’ of theology represses
and hides the generative role played by the feminine. As feminist
theorists argue, this repression results from the fear that an acknowledgment
of women’s originating productivity might undermine the
legislative authority of the one who rules. Methodo-logically, the
bridge I am reinforcing between theology and recent feminist theories
here allows me both to criticize the conventional doctrine of incarnation
and to pursue a possibility of women’s experience of an infinite
effect of the incarnation.
The Word became flesh, but the frozen Word of God in the
abstract and substantialized Western doctrinal incarnation, which is
devoid of body, bodily reality, relationality, and thereby the room for
women’s embodiment, occludes present soteriological experiences. In
classical accounts of the Christological incarnation, the relationality
seems to be limited to the two, the Son and the Father, the patriarchal
and patrilineal relations. Furthermore, the traditional emphasis of
atonement Christology obscures the incarnate presence of God,
reducing the incarnation to a kind of precondition for the crucifixion.
Throughout the signification process, the body which Christ received
from the mother is symbolically sacrificed on the cross. The image of
the crucified body, which tends to associate with a denial of bodily
drives, denotes only a celestial redemption. That is, the dualistic
representations of the incarnation narrow down Christ’s salvation to
the sacrifice of Christ’s body. Women are in a need of a redemptive
doctrine of the incarnation which transfigures their repressed bodiliness
and transforms their suffering into a creative vision.
Correspondingly, my feminist theological understanding of the
incarnation resists the tendency of self-denial and self-e f f a c e m e n t
within women. For women, I think, the incarnation of God is known
through redemptive embodiment of women not through abstract doctrinal
Christology. The so-called objective, rational, and true doctrine
of incarnation does not exist as such, but rather the incarnation of God
is hermeneutically re-realized within the process of women’s
redemption. Thus, the embodiment of redemption signifies a ‘retrieving
the wounded body,’ that is, a ‘becoming body.’ With this regard,
this study argues that the incarnational Christology is a credo that
needs ongoing interpretative participation and engagement. Resisting
a metaphysical tendency to conceptualize the incarnate presence of
God, this study rehabilitates women’s redemptive embodiment within
the Christian doctrine of Incarnation.