Transcendence and Beyond: A Postmodern Inquiry

6. G*d—The Many-Named: Without Place and Proper Name

109 six G*d—The Many-Named Without Place and Proper Name Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza I approach our topic not as a philosopher but as a feminist theologian. Moreover, my work not only engages a different theoretical discourse—the socio-rhetorical, rather than the onto-philosophical—but also speaks with a different, feminist accent. My goal here is to engender a critical reflection on the sociopolitical location, rhetorical situation, and political-religious function of the very abstract, postmodern, philosophical or theological discourses about the transcendent, the other, or the divine. Although it is generally not customary in academic circles, I will approach the abstract philosophical topic ‘‘transcendence and beyond’’ with an experiential story that focuses and articulates in a nutshell the thea- or theo-logical problem with which the present volume is concerned. In light of the overall topic such an approach from experience is, however, problematic: According to the dictionary (Encarta) definition, mundaneness and experience are antonyms to transcendence, which carries meanings like ‘‘existence above and apart from the material world’’ or ‘‘otherworldliness,’’ ‘‘beyond the limits of human experience’’ and ‘‘beyond and above all categories.’’ Such an experiential approach, however, is methodologically demanded by feminist theologies Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza 110 which begin with the critically reflected and analyzed ‘‘mundane’’ experience of wo/men understood in the inclusive sense. When my daughter was around five years old she asked one day, after having watched a space program, ‘‘Mommy where is G*d?’’∞ Busy with something else, I answered quickly, ‘‘G*d is in heaven.’’ ‘‘But Mommy,’’ she objected , ‘‘where is heaven?’’ I realized that I had a budding the*logian on my hands whose questions were to be taken seriously. So after some thought I answered, ‘‘Some people say that G*d is in church, others that G*d is present among the poor, others that G*d can be experienced in nature. Others, in turn, are saying that G*d speaks in the Bible, and others that G*d is to be found deep down in ourselves.’’ Her face lit up and she exclaimed, ‘‘Now I understand! That’s why boys call G*d he and girls call G*d she.’’ This episode articulates the theological questions before us: On the one hand, where is G*d to be found if heaven is no longer above? What does ‘‘being above the material world or apart from the universe’’ actually mean? On the other hand, how to speak about transcendence or about the Divine if it/she/he is ‘‘beyond comprehension’’ and ‘‘escapes categorization’’? How then can we the*legein, which means to speak about G*d? Finally, who is the subject of such G*d-talk and what is its sociopolitical function in a particular historical situation?—These are questions which may be not sufficiently philosophically abstract, but in my view are central to feminist the*logy.≤ I will approach them by looking first at the problem of speaking about G*d, and second, will discuss the rhetoric of such G*d-talk. Third, I will sketch feminist theological interventions in malestream discourses about G*d, and finally, I propose that the the*logical four strategies of traditional G*d-talk could facilitate our speaking of the Divine in a feminist key. The Rhetorical Problem Our modern understanding of the world and the universe with its countless galaxies and infinite space no longer allows the imagination to think either in the biblical terms of above and below—of heaven, earth and underworld—or in the philosophical terms of ‘‘beyond.’’ In addition, we have become more and more conscious that all discourses about the transcendent or the Divine— including those of the Bible≥ —are socially conditioned and politically interested . Feminist, black power, indigenous peoples or postcolonial movements have radically questioned those white elite malestream theological discourses that have spoken about the transcendent as He, or named G*d in the interest of the powerful. As is well known, it was Rudolf Bultmann who wrestled with the question of G*d’s location in the full awareness that the apocalyptic, mythological language which has shaped the Christian understanding of the place of G*d no longer has a reference-point in experience and imagination.∂ Bultmann’s existentialist Entmythologisierungsprogramm has been displaced in the past G*d—The Many-Named 111 decades through an emphasis on metaphor and image. Both approaches, the existentialist...