Feminist theology challenges orthodox Christian teaching, including the doctrine of the Trinity. A challenge to the triune nature of God has an effect upon the way Christians pray in times of vulnerability.
Sarah Coakley and Eliza Griswold were recent guests on the Faith Angle podcast, invited to discuss the Trinity, desire, and vocation.
Coakley, an Anglican priest, theologian, philosopher and former professor at Harvard, Princeton, and the University of Cambridge, specializes in gender theory and feminist philosophy. She has published an array of journals and essays exploring the subject.
Griswold, a journalist for The New Yorker, is a former fellow at Harvard Divinity School, an author of poetry collections and a Pulitzer Prize-winning non-fiction novel.
The question “why do feminists have trouble with Trinitarian thinking?” hints at a larger concern with feminist theology taking root in the church.
Feminist theology claims to seek equality, justice, and liberation for women in the perceived oppressive male system of power and domination. For some, this theology helps shape the history of the church or provides the justification for oppression, silencing, or the exclusion of women, writes Claire Smith for The Gospel Coalition.
A discrepancy between the gospel from which we draw strength and inspiration and the male-dominated church which restricts life and ministry is something that many Christian women have experienced, according to Gospel Coalition writer A. Hauge. Although feminist theologies vary, three basic assumptions are followed: patriarchy, egalitarian anthropology, and the commitment to end social and political struggles for women.
Feminist theology finds flaws in the Trinity, a main theological foundation of Christianity, Griswold notes.
Coakley first addressed how the doctrine of the Trinity came into being, a story she said is not traditionally told in seminary textbooks. The Anglican priest looks at the phenomenon of prayer to explain the formation of the Trinity.
Referencing the Apostle Paul in Romans chapter 8, Paul says that we do not know how to pray, therefore prayer is not done by us. It is formed through the interruption of the Holy Spirit who prays within us.
Coakley suggests that where you start matters because it can change how the Trinity is viewed, because it questions where Christ is located.
“Is it our job to present ourselves to God and therefore make ourselves vulnerable to His will?” Griswold asked, to which Coakley added that Romans 8 is compatible with the teachings of the Lord’s Prayer, because the Lord’s Prayer begins with the request for the Divine to be welcomed in.
According to Coakley, feminists have trouble with Trinitarian thinking for two reasons: linguistics and vulnerability.
Linguistically, Coakley asked: is it possible to call God “Father?” Should we call Him Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? Coakley points to scripture saying that Jesus called God Father, He did not use trinitarian naming.
John 10:30 reads: I and the Father are one.
Calling it the “typics approach,” Coakley says that if feminist theologians omit the word “Father” in the Bible, it represses the meaning of scripture and does not actually dispose of the naming. She explains that the combination of prayer, practice, and critical thinking are needed to continually remind oneself that when Scripture mentions the Father, it is referring to God, not human fathers or abusive patriarchies.
Griswold insists that reducing scripture to one story or minimal stories so that it suits predetermined ends is incorrect.
Another part of this is prayer, the place where we summon and face our own demons. Recognizing that – for those who have suffered abuse – an invitation to prayer could be terrifying but also should not be avoided.
The second point addressed was on the question of vulnerability. There is no doubt that talking about abuse or patriarchal oppression leads to immense vulnerability from the oppressed. Coakley said feminists think the posture of contemplation summons up an initiation to abuse because of its intentional vulnerability before God. “Contemplation is the place where we not only test our desires to become most truly ourselves, but also the place where we are silent waiting on God to act.”
Again, there is something in God’s answer to prayer that changes our order of thinking about the Trinity because it makes us rethink where Christ is. We are standing alongside and in the presence of the Son when we are in prayer.
When feminist theologians deny the use of Father or Son, it goes against the full presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
Comment by Star Tripper on March 29, 2022 at 9:57 am
Feminism is incompatible with Christianity, Western Civilization, and human happiness. Feminism is rampant in the West and Western women are on more anti-depressants than ever before. Most of these women are destined to die alone with their cat or dog. How many female angles dance on pinheads is of no consequence.
Comment by David on March 29, 2022 at 6:14 pm
Trinitarian thought: incompatible with monotheism?
Comment by Sigma on March 30, 2022 at 9:30 am
There are women who are egalitarian when it comes to roles in the church who firmly believe in the Trinity. However, the egalitarian roles within the church issue tend to override doctrine and those women are considered heretics or feminists. Better discernment is needed regarding these issues.
Comment by Cathy Byrd on March 31, 2022 at 10:26 am
This is a beautiful explanation of the intimate relationship between prayer and one’s experience of the Triune God….
My first awareness of this reality occurred as i, having been called, but feeling more like it was commanded, to intercession for a family member whose illness was increasingly seeming to be her journey toward death. It wasn’t for healing on the body to which God ordered me…. it was prayer and pleading for her salvation, as there was some hardened unforgiveness to which she was clinging. One day as I prayed with her by phone I felt an overwhelming presence draw near, then enfold around me. I had the physical sensation of shrinking, literally being diminished in size and being, as this presence enfolded me. It distracted me from prayer which I rather hastily concluded and rose to shake that sensation from me. I pondered long and hard what had happened to me. Was it demonic, attempting to keep me from fervent, effectual prayer? Was it God present to minister to her with and through me. It so rattled me that I was reluctant to throw myself into such depth of prayer for a long time. I would have to say that the feeling was one of vulnerability, loss of my sense of myself, being beyond control of my own self, and it was disconcerting. Several years later I confessed this deep-prayer aversion to a trained contemplative prayer instructor. I took some classes from her and joined a group that met weekly to practice centering contemplative prayer. It seemed a safe environment to reapproach such surrendering of self to the discipline of prayer. I was instructed to ask God for a word upon which to focus while entering into this silent, contemplative time with God , the point of which was to keep my mind focused on active listening, not giving myself over to my own thoughts. The word I felt firmly and repeatedly pressed into my spirit in the days before our first session was “Give.” I was heavily invested in ministry to marginalized women in emotional emergencies of various kinds and working with them to help achieve spiritual emergence and recovered life functionality. I was resistant to God’s word “give”, even angry. I said,”what else can I give? I am all-in in ministry and service and generosity with resources and my very life with these to whom you have called me! I have nothing else to give!” But in obedience, I used that word for the first session. I remained focused but I didn’t experience anything but stillness of spirit for that 20 minute session as 6 of us sat in a circle together. Afterward we watched a video by a noted practitioner of contemplative prayer. In it he said that the purpose of this practice is not to give ourselves to it, but to simply still our minds and spirits so that God may give Himself, His Presence, to us! I felt so humbled by this realization that God was not calling me to give anything but that God desired to give Himself to me, if I could be still and vulnerable enough to receive His Presence. I left the session lightened, renewed, and ready for all of God’s self that He desired to give going forward. It revolutionized my awareness of God’s Presence and gave me complete ease to abandon myself to Him. It’s been quite the ride! I can relate to the Presence of the Father drawing near to be present with the Son alongside me, present to me as I set myself in a cooperative and receptive posture in acts of prayer and service with the Holy Spirit. It is a sensation of transcendence and entering into Holy Communion with God that is indescribable. Though initially the surrender requires one to confront the feeling of vulnerability, it leads to a feeling of ease in abandonment to the flow of the Divine in a way that is profoundly desirable, it cannot be achieved by one’s own effort, however, but only in surrendering one’s whole self, making oneself available to receive such moments of the periodic fullness of God, as He had given The fullness of Himself in His entirety to Jesus, the Christ. from conception, then confirmed in Christ’s baptism and as it remained upon Christ through the rest of his earthly life and continues upon the resurrected and ascended Christ Jesus as the “right hand”, the Implementer, of the will of God, even present in us followers as His representatives and co-heirs as the “right hand” of God, in the workd but no longer of it, through the Holy Spirit in us. This is the beauty and mystery of the Divine Triune Godhead as I experience Him.
Comment by Cathy Byrd on April 1, 2022 at 9:41 am
“Again, there is something in God’s answer to prayer that changes our order of thinking about the Trinity because it makes us rethink where Christ is. We are standing alongside and in the presence of the Son when we are in prayer.”
In reading the article’s ending paragraph again I realized it would be useful to tell “the rest of the story” of the family member for whose salvation God compelled me to pray… just a few days before her death, I visited one final time. She was deeply under the fog of morphine. I sat a while, visiting with her mother and husband, during which time she did not speak. As I rose to leave I stood at her feet, looking at her and praying in my spirit. As I looked at her she appeared to glow with a soft, translucent light and the Lord spoke in my heart, “This is Christ.” I knew in that moment she had completed the work of forgiveness and reconciliation with God, within herself, and toward others that I had been urging her to and fervently praying for. I knew God had answered the intercession he had called me to and that all along, His reason for doing so was to show me the answer in that moment. It was a healing moment for me, as well. As I walked by her side to leave, she reached out her hand, taking mine, and with a strong voice said, “I’ll see you later..” I knew it would not be in this life, but in the next.