God’s Mother, Eve’s Advocate

254 Pages·2002·1.73 MB·English

by  Tina Beattie

God's Mother, Eve's Advocate
By the same author
Rediscovering Mary
The Last Supper According To Martha and Mary
Eve's Pilgrimage
God's Mother,
Eve's Advocate
A Marian Narrative of Women's Salvation
TINA BEATTIE
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First published in Great Britain in 1999 as
God's Mother, Eve's Advocate: A Gynocentric Refiguration of Marian
Symbolisim in Engagement with Luce Irigaray,
CCSRG Monograph Series 3, The University of Bristol.
This edition published in Great Britain in 2002 by Continuum
Copyright © Tina Beattie 2002
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any
form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, microfiche, mechanical recording,
photocopying, translation, or any other means, known or as yet unknown, or
stored in an information retrieval system, without permission obtained
beforehand from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 0 8264 5563 8
Typeset by BookEns Ltd, Royston, Herts.
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
MPG Books Ltd. Bodmin, Cornwall
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Saint Anne Trinitarian (16th C). Heures a l'Usage d'Angers, printed by Simon Vostre,
Estampes, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.
Saint Anne Trinitarian printed with permission - Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris.
Contents
List of Abbreviations ix
Preface xi
Introduction 1
CHAPTER ONE NARRATIVE, SYMBOLISM AND SEXUAL
DIFFERENCE: THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES 20
Narrative and identity 20
Narrative and gender 21
Lrigaray and psychoanalysis 23
Irigaray's psycholinguistic critique of Western culture 28
Irigaray and the reclamation of women's religious traditions 33
Going beyond Irigaray - the potential of the Catholic story 37
CHAPTER TWO NARRATIVE ORIGINS: INTERPRETING
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FEMALE BODY IN EARLY
CHRISTIAN READINGS OF GENESIS 45
Fallen knowledge and the enigma of sexual origins 45
Christian refigurations of Genesis 1-3 46
Sexual difference and the body in early Christian writings 50
The influence of Augustine on Western Christianity 53
Women's holiness and the mimesis of masculinity 56
Mary and the redemption of women 58
Early Christianity, paganism and Eve 60
CHAPTER THREE THE FEMALE BODY AND THE
SACRAMENTAL PRIESTHOOD IN NEO-ORTHODOX
CATHOLIC THEOLOGY 71
Essentializing masculinity - the sacramental priesthood and the
maleness of Christ 71
Symbolic femininity and the female body 74
The phallus, the priesthood and the symbolic transformation of
the Mass 79
Marian theology and the rehabilitation of the female body 82
CHAPTER FOUR THE MATERNAL BODY AND
THE INCARNATION 87
The doctrinal significance of Mary's virginal motherhood in the
early Church 87
Transcending the maternal body - Irigaray's critique of Plato 89
vii
Contents
The maternal body as source of life - theological perspectives 92
Reconciling opposites - motherhood and the incarnation 96
Childbirth, suffering and the redemption of women 99
'Mother of the living' - Eve and the symbolization of death 103
CHAPTER FIVE THE SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE OF
THE VIRGIN BIRTH 115
The incarnation as a symbolic return to origins 115
Genesis and the fall into dualism 116
Aural intercourse - sexuality, the fall and the annunciation 123
Virginity and the renewal of creation 127
Purity and impurity as metaphors of life and death 129
Sexuality, violence and the virgin birth according to René Girard 133
CHAPTER SIX MARY AS MOTHER AND DAUGHTER:
MATERNAL GENEALOGIES AND MARIAN THEOLOGY 141
Separation and identity in the mother-daughter relationship 141
Mothers, daughters and the symbolic dereliction of women 143
The motherhood of Mary from the perspectives of contemporary
Catholic women 144
'Daughter of Eve Unfällen' - Mary as the daughter of Eve 147
The motherhood of Mary, Eve and the Church 150
The maternal gaze - the mother's body as visual space 155
CHAPTER SEVEN BEARING THE PERSON OF EVE:
MARY AND THE REDEMPTION OF WOMEN 164
'Can a male saviour save women?' - a perennial question 164
The Magnificat of the redeemed woman 167
Redeeming Eve - a gynocentric reclamation 172
Rethinking the hymen - refïguring virginity 175
Prometheus or Pandora? - Eve, Mary and human freedom 181
A feminine divine? - language, subjectivity and divinity 184
Redeeming sexual difference 186
CHAPTER EIGHT EVE, MARY AND THE PRIESTHOOD 194
Priesthood, sacrifice and fecundity - perpetuating religious
genealogies 194
Women's ordination - 'a sort of diktat which does not give its
reasons' 198
Christianity, paganism and the female flesh 202
The incarnation and the maternal priest 204
Conclusion 209
Bibliography 214
Index 237
vin
List of Abbreviations
ACW Ancient Christian Writers: The Works of the Fathers in Translation,
Walter J. Burghardt, John J. Dillon and Dennis D. McManus
(eds).
New York and Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press.
ANCL Ante-Nie ene Christian Library. Edinburgh: T&T Clark.
BSFEM Bulletin de la Société Française d'Etudes Mariales.
CMP Corpus Marianum Patristicum, collected by Sergius Alvarez
Campus O FM.
LCC Library of the Christian Classics. London: SCM Press Ltd.
LF A Library of Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church Anterior to the
Divisions of East and West, translated by members of the English
Church. Oxford: John Henry Parker; London: F. and J.
Rivington.
NFC The Fathers of the Church, a new translation. Washington, DC:
The
Catholic University of America Press.
NPNF A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers. Oxford: John
Henry Parker.
PG, PL Patrologiae Cursus Completus, J.-P. Migne.
SE Second Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund
Freud, translated from the German under the general editorship of
James Strachey, in collaboration with Anna Freud, assisted by
Alix
Strachey, Alan Tyson and Angela Richards. London: Hogarth
Press and Institute of Psychoanalysis, 1953-74.
WSA The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century,
under the auspices of the Augustinian Heritage Institute, trans.
and
notes Edmund Hill OP and John E. Rotelle OSA.
Abbreviations of Titles by Luce Irigaray
ESD An Ethics of Sexual Difference, trans. Carolyn Burke and Gillian
C.
Gill. London: The Athlone Press, 1993 (1984).
ILTY / love to you, trans. Alison Martin. New York and
London: Routledge, 1996 (1995).
IR The Irigaray Reader, Margaret Whitford (ed.). Oxford, UK and
Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1994 (1991).
IX