Kenotic Gestures
Comparative Aesthetics and the Feminist Debate on Kenosis
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/isit.36643Keywords:
feminist theology, kenosis, contemplation, love, bhakti rasaAbstract
Christians sometimes take Christ's kenosis, or self-emptying, as the pattern for Christian love of God and neighbor. Feminist critics suspect that this model reinforces unhealthy gender norms and oppressive power structures and contest the nature and extent of this template. Interreligiousstudy can shed light on the debate. The Gaudiya Vaisnava tradition employs the categories of Indian aesthetic theory to explain how types of loving devotion (bhakti rasa) toward Krishna are evoked and expressed. The subordinate and peaceful modes of love for Krishna can serve as a heuristic for understanding Sarah Coakley's and Cynthia Bourgeault's retrievals of kenosis in spiritual practice. A comparative reading suggests that objections to Coakley's version, which resembles the subordinate love of God, are more intractable due to the rootedness of its aesthetic in oppressive human experiences, while Bourgeault's reclamation of kenosis aligns with a peaceful or meditative mode of love that feminists may more readily appreciate.
References
Anders Nygren, Anders. 1953. Agape and Eros. Translated by Philip S. Watson. London: SPCK.
Bourgeault, Cynthia. 2016. The Heart of Centering Prayer. Boulder, CO: Shambhala.
------. 2008. The Wisdom Jesus: Transforming Heart and Mind--a New Perspective on Christ and His Message. Boulder, CO: Shambhala.
Briggs, Sheila. 1989. "Can an Enslaved God Liberate? Hermeneutical Reflections on Philippians 2:6-11." Semeia 47: 137-153.
Chau, Carolyn A. 2012. "'What Could Possibly Be Given': Towards an Exploration of Kenosis as Forgiveness--Continuing the Conversation between Coakley, Hampson, and Papanikolaou." Modern Theology 28(1): 1-24. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0025.2011.01723.x
Coakley, Sarah. 2013. God, Sexuality, and the Self: An Essay 'On the Trinity.' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139048958
------. 2002. Powers and Submissions: Spirituality, Philosophy and Gender. Oxford: Blackwell.
Hampson, Daphne. 1990. Theology and Feminism. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Mercedes, Anna. 2011. Power For: Feminism and Christ's Self-Giving. London and New York: T & T Clark.
Nygren, Anders. 1953. Agape and Eros. Translated by Philip S. Watson. London: SPCK.
Papanikolaou, Aristotle. 2003. "Person, Kenosis and Abuse: Hans Urs von Balthasar and Feminist Theologies in Conversation." Modern Theology 19(1): 82-111. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0025.00209
Ruether, Rosemary Radford. 1983. Sexism and God-Talk. London: SCM.
Rupa Gosvamin. 2003. The Bhaktirasamrtasindhu of Rupa Gosvamin (BhRS). Translated by David L. Haberman. New Delhi: Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts and Motilal Banarsidass.
Saiving, Valerie. 1979 [1960]. "The Human Situation: A Feminine View." In Womanspirit Rising: A Feminist Reader in Religion, edited by Carol P. Christ and Judith Plaskow, 25-42. San Francisco: Harper and Row.
Saxena, Neela Bhattacharya. 2012. "Gynocentric Thealogy of Tantric Hinduism: A Meditation upon the Devi." In The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Theology, edited by Mary McClintock Fulkerson and Sheila Briggs, 131-156. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Shaner, Katherine A. 2017. "Seeing Rape and Robbery." Biblical Interpretation 25(3): 342-363. https://doi.org/10.1163/15685152-00253p04
Terrell, JoAnne Marie. 1998. Power in the Blood? The Cross in the African American Experience. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis.
Tonstad, Linn Marie. 2016. God and Difference: The Trinity, Sexuality, and the Transformation of Finitude. Abingdon: Routledge.
Voss Roberts, Michelle. 2014. Tastes of the Divine: Hindu and Christian Theologies of Emotion. New York: Fordham University Press.
Walker, Alice. 1983. In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose. San Diego: Harcourt, Brace, and Jovanovich.
Watson, Philip S. 1953. "Translator's Preface." In Agape and Eros, edited by Anders Nygren, i-x. London: SPCK.
