At 09:57 AM 12/24/99 -0600, you wrote:
>It certainly was not meant literally to espouse androgyny. No one
ever interpreted this verse as meaning that men and women cease to be
different biologically nor that male and female biological differences
do not carry with them real emotional, psychological, mental differences.
[cut] Whatever Gal. 3:28 means, it cannot mean, at least with a Jewish and
Christian background, an elimination of differences. Everything would point
toward full preservation of all differences but adding a union theretofore
unimagined.
>
>Dennis Martin
>
I must not have made my point very well. I was not arguing that it espouses
androgyny (although I think that term needs to be defined) but a
transcending of gender, without subsuming both sexes into a neuter or
normative male model. To restate my point, the differences of ethnicity,
class or sex are not eliminated, but they cease to be divisions in the
oneness of Christ. The bodily differences do of course remain, but
assumptions about what those differences entail, such as that women cannot
be religious leaders or cannot reject family life in order to follow Christ,
have been superseded by Christ. The Christian tradition is far more diverse
than you are allowing for, both in respect to women priests and the
understanding of gender.
Maeve
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