여성신학의 입장에서 본 몸 그리고 성육신

Abstract

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.