Abstract
For many Christian women there is a belief that relationship with God requires a form of selflessness in which their self must be abnegated in order to embody faithful Christian living. The consequences of this treatment of selfhood, and particularly the connections to objectification, have been thoroughly discussed in a range of contexts within feminist theology, but there has been more limited consideration of constructive approaches to the development of the self. In this thesis I consider, therefore, how self-realisation could function as a remedy for objectification and allow women to truly Be in relationship with God.
Much feminist reflection is given to the problem of women’s objectification, particularly in relationships with an Other, and a key early voice in this conversation is Simone de Beauvoir. Beauvoir draws on an existentialist understanding of ontology—as articulated in her work and further detailed by Jean-Paul Sartre—to explicate the treatment of women as beings ¬en soi, inert objects. For emancipation to occur, Beauvoir argues, self-realisation must be made possible through relationships of reciprocity which acknowledge one’s subjectivity even when they can only be seen as an object by the Other. While there are marked differences between the relationship of the self with a human Other and the self with the divine Other, this appreciation of reciprocity undergirds an approach to relationship with God which does not overwhelm human particularity, but rather is the place where the self is encouraged and empowered to fully Be. Kathryn Tanner’s work on transcendence and immanence, particularly in terms of non-competition, offers a greater understanding of the potential for reciprocal relationship between the human self and the divine Other.
Tanner’s view of relationship with God contributes to an understanding of the persistence of human selfhood in relationship with God in which self-realisation can be pursued through an abnegation not of the self but of the objectification experienced by the self. I draw here on a reclamation of a Christian view of the importance of kenosis, not in the sense critiqued by feminist theologians, but understood through the lens of the potential Being offered by nothingness. In addition, constructive practices of naming and narrating one’s lives, pursued in dialogue with Others and with God, offer avenues for self-realisation. Ultimately, the self is no longer something to lose or hide in dependence on an Other, there is no longer an imperative to be objectified but, rather, there is an encouragement to self-realisation as part of a faithful relationship with God.