Modern Theism, etc., Re: Sister Elizabeth A. Johnson

[StAnastasia]

It is understandable why the Bishops’ Statement would upset many theologians who share Sister Johnson’s system of theology.

No, the only upsetting thing is that the criticism was not based on a fair, careful, and accurate reading of Quest for the Living God. As I tell my graduate theology students, you have no right to criticize someone else’s position until you can state that position fairly and accurately. In other words, you have to earn the right to criticize a position; you are not entitled to criticize a position if you have misrepresented it.

And as you stated in post 56, you and many other scholars you know will continue to assign her book to appropriate theology classes. Therefore, it is imperative that the Bishops be listened to.

 

[StAnastasia]

Apparently this challenge has become one of your favorites. And I thought I was the only one so honored.

I’ve extended the honor.

We are created to know, love, and serve God so that we can be happy with Him in heaven.

 

[nordskoven]

“Can I read a book banned by the Bishops?”

In addition to the critique by the USCCB that you referenced, the critique also contained a cover letter by Cardinal Donald Wuerl, chairman of the USCCB’s Committee on Doctrine. The USCCB also issued a press release explaining the intent of the measure taken on this matter. So far as I can tell from these materials, the intent of the USCCB was to answer concerns raised by some bishops about the “pastoral implications” of the book’s teaching. Nowhere could I find anything that “banned” Catholics from reading the book.

Nevertheless, it should be noted that Catholics ought to be careful in reading books that have raised serious concerns for the bishops of their country. You seem to be taking at least one necessary precaution by reading the book alongside the bishops’ critique. But there are other concerns as well. Here’s an examen you might use when considering reading books you know have been found by bishops in the Church to be faulty in matters of doctrine or morals:

• Do you have an objective need to read this book (either for yourself or for others for whom you are responsible), or is your decision to read it merely a means of satisfying undue curiosity? If you are merely curious, it may be better to read a review of the book by a commentator whose spiritual judgment and doctrinal orthodoxy you trust.
• Do you have the intellectual formation necessary to weigh the issues raised both by the author and by the critics? (I don’t intend to imply that some people are not “smart enough” to read a particular book; I only intend to point out that some people may not have the educational background necessary to address these issues.)
• Do you have sufficient spiritual preparation? While the “bare minimum” of Mass every Sunday/holy day and confession of mortal sins once per year might be “sufficient” for maintaining a state of grace, those Catholics who expose themselves to challenges to their faith must necessarily increase their commitment to the Church. Frequent reception of the sacraments of confession and the Eucharist, and an increased reliance on both personal prayer and spiritual direction with a well-trained, balanced, and orthodox confessor/director are all reasonable precautions.

Bottom line: There’s nothing wrong with reading books that challenge your faith, but you must at the same time deepen your commitment to that faith, and take reasonable precautions to protect and defend it.
__________________
**“If anyone comes to me, I want to lead them to Him.” --St. Edith Stein **

 

[Dale_M]

“Can I read a book banned by the Bishops?”

Of course, Sr. Elizabeth’s book hasn’t been banned. The question was based on the opinion of someone who was only semi-informed.

Nordskoven is quoting a recent question and answer in the Ask An Apologist forum. The answer was provided by Michelle Arnold. Here is a the link to that thread:
forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=573618

 

[StAnastasia]

Of course, Sr. Elizabeth’s book hasn’t been banned. The question was based on the opinion of someone who was only semi-informed. Nordskoven is quoting a recent question and answer in the Ask An Apologist forum. The answer was provided by Michelle Arnold. Here is a the link to that thread:
forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=573618

I appreciate Michelle Arnold’s last line:

“There’s nothing wrong with reading books that challenge your faith, but you must at the same time deepen your commitment to that faith, and take reasonable precautions to protect and defend it.”

On rereading Quest for the Living God, I see how important a work it is for my students, and for others who are interested in deepening their Catholic Faith. I like many aspects of the book, particularly her deeply insightful discussion (in the last chapter) of the doctrine of the Trinity.

 

[grannymh]

I appreciate Michelle Arnold’s last line:

“There’s nothing wrong with reading books that challenge your faith, but you must at the same time deepen your commitment to that faith, and take reasonable precautions to protect and defend it.”

On rereading Quest for the Living God, I see how important a work it is for my students, and for others who are interested in deepening their Catholic Faith. I like many aspects of the book, particularly her deeply insightful discussion (in the last chapter) of the doctrine of the Trinity.

I also agree with Michelle Arnold’s last line in this link:
forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=8027359&postcount=2

However, it is essential to read the question in post 1: forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=573618

Please note that the poster said she was using the U.S. bishops’ recent critique as a guideline while reading Quest for the Living God. This is a good example of following Michelle’s point of taking reasonable steps to protect one’s Catholic faith.

.

 

[Dale_M]

The paperback edition of the book will be available in three weeks time.
amazon.com/Quest-Living-God-Frontiers-Theology/dp/1441174621/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1309376308&sr=8-1

This doesn’t seem to be much of a cost savings over the [hardback edition](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/08...desc_1?ie=UTF8&n=283155&qid=1309376308&sr=8-1), although I am sure that college students and others may want to minimize the amount they spend

A Kindle version is already available.

I’m not sure how many of us have read or are reading the book, but I think that the more of us who do so, the more productive this discussion will be. Considering the USCCB Committee on Doctrine is still preparing their reply to Sr. Elizabeth Johnson’s response, and considering the strong support among Catholic theologians that Sr. Johnson is receiving, I think this discussion will be active for weeks into the future.

Please consider reading the book, if you are planning to participate in the discussion. I think doing so will help us understand both sides of the controversy all the better.

 

[grannymh]

While I am still dealing with some obstacles to serious posting, I think that this post is something to consider.

forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=8060198&postcount=313

"That’s the difference between metaphors and similies. While God is not male Scripture most suitably employs male metaphors for Him, while on occasion employing female similies for Him. There is a basic distinction between the two, with "simile/comparing (mother) and metaphor/naming (father), and the meanings they convey. . .Whereas similies compare, metaphors predicate or NAME [emphasis mine], “Language for God and Feminist Language, a Literary and Rhetorical Analysis,” Roland Mushat Frye, Interpretation, A Journal of Bible and Theology.

“Perverting the metaphor corrupts the Catholic understanding of Creation. God is not some sort of pantheistic earth-mother, but the Living God Whose own prerogative - not any necessity - initiated all Creation while not being a part of that Creation (until the Second Person becomes Man). Thus the usage of metaphoric male as the Initiator, not the receptor (woman) of Creation (which is feminine in relation to Him - as is the Church to Christ).”

 

[StAnastasia]

I’m not sure how many of us have read or are reading the book, but I think that the more of us who do so, the more productive this discussion will be. Considering the USCCB Committee on Doctrine is still preparing their reply to Sr. Elizabeth Johnson’s response, and considering the strong support among Catholic theologians that Sr. Johnson is receiving, I think this discussion will be active for weeks into the future.

Dale_M, I was speaking with a Catholic theologian over the weekend who is re-reading Quest for the Living God and the bishops’ rambling critique, and who wonders who the theologians were who were chosen to assemble and write it. He believes that given the deftness and power of Elizabeth Johnson’s response – and the overwhelming support she receives from professional theologians – that the bishops may simply choose to bury the issue quietly this autumn. But time will tell. I certainly plan to assign it to future classes, as it is one of the most thoughtful and inspiring book on the theology of God available today.

StAnastasia

 

[grannymh]

Dale_M, I was speaking with a Catholic theologian over the weekend who is re-reading Quest for the Living God and the bishops’ rambling critique, and who wonders who the theologians were who were chosen to assemble and write it. He believes that given the deftness and power of Elizabeth Johnson’s response – and the overwhelming support she receives from professional theologians – that the bishops may simply choose to bury the issue quietly this autumn. But time will tell. I certainly plan to assign it to future classes, as it is one of the most thoughtful and inspiring book on the theology of God available today.

StAnastasia

Glad to know that you will be able to share your personal insights as you interact with your future classes.

What do you think about examining the Bishop’s statement and Sister Johnson’s reply without reading the Quest for the Living God? Would it be like looking at the evidence without outside prejudice or influence?

Do not get upset. As soon as the doctor gives me the o.k. to drive, I will get the book.
(The internet scares me especially since I discovered that I would be purchasing airline tickets to San Juan instead of St. Louis.)
In the meantime, from what you have been posting, I need to catch up on the current issues in the theological world.

 

[StAnastasia]

What do you think about examining the Bishop’s statement and Sister Johnson’s reply without reading the Quest for the Living God

? Would it be like looking at the evidence without outside prejudice or influence?

Grannymh, while reviews do help in a world where publications flood the market, I would never assign a book without first reading it. It’s a fairly easy read – you could do it in a weekend. And the USCCB critique and Sister Johnson’s response are about twenty five pages each, depending on the font you print them in.

(The internet scares me especially since I discovered that I would be purchasing airline tickets to San Juan instead of St. Louis.)

 

[grannymh]

Grannymh, while reviews do help in a world where publications flood the market, I would never assign a book without first reading it. It’s a fairly easy read – you could do it in a weekend. And the USCCB critique and Sister Johnson’s response are about twenty five pages each, depending on the font you print them in.

Maybe I am wrong, but I did not get the impression that the Bishop’s statement was a review of a book.

It’s good to know where you are going.

I rarely know where I am going until I arrive.

As I continue to think, since I am prohibited from driving, the Bishop’s statement looks like it is addressing an issue of pastoral concern. Apparently, there were grassroots’ concerns in some parts of the country. I remember similar concerns about some books in the early 1990’s.

Please correct me if I am wrong, but from what you have posted*, Quest for a Living God* is a major culmination of years of hard work by a prominent Catholic theologian and is accepted everywhere by members of major theological organizations.

If I am right about this book being extremely important for the life of the Church, it is then extremely important to first understand the issues which concerned Bishops on a national scale.

Are there particular issues that you find extremely important?

Blessings,
granny

The Gospel of John, Chapter 14

 

[nordskoven]

“It (Sr. Johnson’s book) effectively precludes the possibility of human knowledge of God through divine revelation,” the statement says, “and reduces all names and concepts of God to human constructions that are to be judged not on their accuracy … but on their social and political utility.” --USCCB

“Womanist” Sr. Elizabeth A. Johnson effectively neuters all lingo in the Bible. Sr. Johnson turns the revealed knowledge of the divinely-inspired word into a toothless manifesto for a diffuse socio-political movement. Sister is a great gnostic writer; is a master syncretist theologian; and a forceful elitist lobbying for theological privilege. The very link to the divine that could effect powerful social union on Earth, Christ manifest in His Church, is smother-loved by a Bible void of meaning; and elitist declarations that Hinduism and Islam are another way, truth and life on the many paths to nirvana.

So, too, has Sister Elizabeth voided the very power base of her “sister” the Virgin Mary, “blessed among women,” by insisting that she is…just another woman. The Virgin Mary is brought low to some presumed state regular gals inhabit. The language “blessed among women” exalts the female unlike Hannah’s being blessed with a child being called “blessed above women.” This is ignored by the sloppy scholarship of Johnson in her quest for a feminist agenda of women priests as promoted by one of her quoted consouers, Elisabeth Schussler-Fiorenza.

The acclaimed Sister Elizabeth Johnson is a poor writer, hammering the word “dynamic” and “liberation” into uneasy submission by overuse in her quest for meaninglessness. She’s arrived. And where has this womanist quest lead her? To a God who is no longer forensically or positionally male yet expressing feminine qualities; but to Mary as demi-goddess.

“If Mary reflects the female face of God, then Marian theology and devotion have a contribution to make toward the crucial task of imaging God in inclusive fashion. In other words, the Marian tradition is a golden mother lode which can be “mined” in order to retrieve female imagery and language about the holy mystery of God.”
–E.A. Johnson

Johnson’s theology is strictly pop, churned out for groupies who have devoured NY Times best-seller gnostic literature for decades. Eat up. The real presence of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary are the pillars to which the Barque of Peter and the little boats who evade the barrage of gnostic books find safe mooring. This relentless volley of gnostic literature will cease when the rebels sink under self-created waves of chaos. Apologies to St. John Bosco. He’s just a metaphor for mysticism created by a patriarchal Church that doesn’t respect awards and degrees as transcending revealed truth.

 

[Dale_M]

“Womanist” Sr. Elizabeth A. Johnson effectively neuters all lingo in the Bible. Sr. Johnson turns the revealed knowledge of the divinely-inspired word into a toothless manifesto for a diffuse socio-political movement. Sister is a great gnostic writer; is a master syncretist theologian; and a forceful elitist lobbying for theological privilege. The very link to the divine that could effect powerful social union on Earth, Christ manifest in His Church, is smother-loved by a Bible void of meaning; and elitist declarations that Hinduism and Islam are another way, truth and life on the many paths to nirvana.

Nordskoven, why do you use the term “womanist” in reference to Sr. Elizabeth Johnson? The term has a very specific meaning, and I doubt she has ever used the term in reference to herself.

As for the rest of your post, have you read her book The Quest for the Living God? Have you read any other books by her? I am wondering what evidence you are basing your claims on.

 

[StAnastasia]

Johnson’s theology is strictly pop, churned out for groupies who have devoured NY Times best-seller gnostic literature for decades…This relentless volley of gnostic literature will cease when the rebels sink under self-created waves of chaos.

These are flat-out lies and calumnies. Bearing false witness against your neighbor is an action that should concern you as a Catholic.

 

[grannymh]

The* Quest for the Living God* is so popular that it is sold out and I now have to wait for the paperback edition. In the meantime, I have located my August 16, 1993 copy of Christianity Today. Its cover article is “Why God Is Not Mother”. Back then, Protestants were concerned about feminist God-talk in the church.

Back then, according to the article’s introduction, most evangelical feminists were more interested in fairness than in revising names for God. Early in the article, there is this statement: “The feminist claim is that all language about God is analogical and metaphorical, and that therefore it can be changed at will to overcome the church’s patriarchalism and foster women’s liberation.”

One can go back even further to Mary Daly. According to her obituary in the New York Times, January 7, 2010, she was among the first American women to train as a Roman Catholic theologian. Professor Daly challenged orthodoxies from the start.
And then there is Rosemary Radford Ruether, who was considered a Catholic feminist theologian teaching at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, a graduate school of theology related to the United Methodist Church. --My apology, but I don’t know her current perspective.

My point is that Sister Johnson is writing within a feminist tradition that has touched all of Christianity in some way for many years.

From page 4 of the “Statement on Quest for the Living God: Mapping Frontiers in the Theology of God, by Sister Elizabeth A. Johnson” by the Committee on Doctine, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

“Sr. Johnson states correctly that God can, at times, be msrepresented as an arrogant monarch Who acts in a tyranical and dictatorial fashion. However, traditional Catholic teaching does not do this.”

From page 5. “Sr. Johnson is correct that some notions of God do wrongly portray Him as as a ‘distant lordly lawgiver’ Who ‘stands at the summit of hierarchical power, reinforcing structures of authority in society, church, and family.’ This may be the view of ‘modern theism,’ but it is not the view of traditional Church teaching.”

One needs to look at what Sr. Johnson is expressing correctly, i.e., misrepresentations and wrong portrayals. The important question is: How does she respond? Does she respond with traditional Catholic teaching?

 

[nordskoven]

Warmed-over Liberation Theology, treating of “black Jesus” and “black Hagar” (the Egyptian princess-concubine Sarah chose for Abraham) makes Sr. Elizabeth A. Johnson a womanist, concerned with black feminism. This parallels carpetbagger Bill Clinton’s status as the first “black president” (Lincoln’s Republican roots disqualifying him).

Not only have I not read Sister Elizabeth A. Johnson’s book, Sister Elizabeth A. Johnson has not read Sister Elizabeth A. Johnson’s book. The word “dynamic” is so larded throughout that it is a metaphysical certainty that this maven of metaphor fired off a rough draft to her publisher and chillaxed. In all truthiness, I am reading excerpts on-line. And they are awful. I’m reading and have read authors she quotes in her Index of Politically Correct Global Theologistas. And they are awful, although better written. Mary Daly. Schussler-Fiorenza. I’ll wait until Sister Johnson gets her Imprimatur.

Being anti-Catholic in sheep’s clothing doesn’t make Sister or her cheerleaders scholarly or cogent, however popular. This fascist insistence on undifferentiated, generic God-knowing means nobody can disagree. That isn’t academic freedom, it is elitist tyranny. Muslims may have their beliefs, and may consider Sufi’s as heretics, mayn’t they? Please, mommy dearest? But nooo, we have to cobble up a pig’s breakfast theology from India, Arabia, Mexico, anywhere but Europe, the incubator of Christianity and white guilt. Sister will not allow differences or differentiation in forcing her “global theology” meaninglessness on to an increasingly irrational academia.

Elizabeth A. Johnson, CSJ, should be everlastingly grateful that the Catholic bishops were kind enough to note the theological spinach in her teeth before the Jews, Muslims, Sufi’s, Hindus, et alii upbraided her for the hack job she did on their theology. Ditto real feminists. “This book Truly Our Sister] is required reading, especially for feminists who have all but given up on Mary.” --CHOICE review on the back side of Quest. Susan B. Anthony List, wield your golden lasso and say, “Shazam!” The Lone Enabler would have the frenzied Kali Cult before she’d have the triumph of the Immaculate Heart. Please, ex-and-anti-Catholics, let us and our God have a unique identity.

 

[StAnastasia]

My point is that Sister Johnson is writing within a feminist tradition that has touched all of Christianity in some way for many years.

Correction: Sister Johnson* is* writing within the Catholic tradition. She happens to be a female scholar.

One needs to look at what Sr. Johnson is expressing correctly, i.e., misrepresentations and wrong portrayals. The important question is: How does she respond? Does she respond with traditional Catholic teaching?

 

[StAnastasia]

Warmed-over Liberation Theology, treating of “black Jesus” and “black Hagar” (the Egyptian princess-concubine Sarah chose for Abraham) makes Sr. Elizabeth A. Johnson a womanist, concerned with black feminism.

False.

Not only have I not read Sister Elizabeth A. Johnson’s book, Sister Elizabeth A. Johnson has not read Sister Elizabeth A. Johnson’s book. The word “dynamic” is so larded throughout that it is a metaphysical certainty that this maven of metaphor fired off a rough draft to her publisher and chillaxed.

 

[grannymh]

Yes, Dr. Johnson responds with traditional Catholic teaching (if you consider theology in the style of Augustine and Aquinas “Catholic”). No lay academic scholar could get away with falsifying and misrepresenting another scholar’s work.

Post 76 addresses two specific points in the Bishops’ statement. While I appreciate your general answer about Augustine and Aquinas, I am more interested in specifics.