Autor: Little, Joyce

Buch: The Church and the Culture War

Titel: The Church and the Culture War

Stichwort: Trinität, Hierarchie; Theologen d. Egalität: falsches Verständnis von Hierarchie -> Hierarchie = Ungleichheit; dagegen: Personen d. T.: gleich und verschieden, Gleichheit und Hierarchie

Kurzinhalt: Why do so many theologians today fail to understand, much less properly apply to their analysis of human existence, the hierarchical character of the Trinity? The answer lies in a widespread misunderstanding about hierarchy.

Textausschnitt: HIERARCHY MISUNDERSTOOD

99a If man, male and female, is created in the image of God, it would seem inescapable that the differentiation of Persons in the Trinity by which the sacred order of the Trinity is constituted would have an important bearing on the male-female differentiation by which we image God, and that indeed this sexual differentiation would be recognized as the basis for a sacred order or hierarchy within the human community. Unhappily, just the opposite is the case among those theologians intent on arguing for an egalitarian understanding of human beings. Either the Trinity itself or the hierarchical character of the Trinity is ignored. (Fs)

99b Feminists by and large have tried to redefine the Godhead in such a way as to make it compatible with their ideology. Some of these redefinitions completely ignore the Trinitarian character of God. Sr. Mary Luke Tobin, for example, in an article in U.S. Catholic, tells us that language such as "Father" and even "Mother", though having some value when applied to God, is inadequate to expressing who God is. She prefers another way of characterizing him. "Rahner consistently calls God the 'Holy Mystery,' which for me is a much better word to describe God."1 There is only one problem with this. If we are going to abandon the Trinity for "Holy Mystery", we might as well call God the "Wholly Nothingness", since "Holy Mystery" conveys absolutely nothing about who God is. (Fs) (notabene)

99c Other feminists have tried to retain a trinitarian formula for referring to God, while emptying the formula of any trinitarian substance. Hence, we have been offered "Creator-Redeemer-Sustainer" in place of Father-Son-Holy Spirit. Theologian Catherine Mowry LaCugna, however, rightly points out that this kind of formula utterly fails, inasmuch as "distinguishing persons by their function with respect to us does not sufficiently highlight the personal and relational character of God as God. The strong and bold claim of trinitarian theology is that not only is God related to us, but it is the very essence or substance of God to be relational."2

100a Unfortunately, even among those who are fully conscious of the relational character of Trinitarian personhood, we see an inability to come to terms with the full implications of the doctrine of the Trinity. George Tavard, for example, has written a study on the role of woman in Christianity in which he recognizes that the communal character of the Trinity as a union of three related Persons has implications for human existence as a communion of persons. However, he fails to recognize that the differentiation of the Persons in the Trinity is ordered in a specific way such that the Persons are non-interchangeable relations. As a result, he accepts the view that human beings image God as persons in relationship to one another, but rejects the male-female differentiation as having any theological significance for that imaging. Hence he tells us: "Facing their call to the Trinitarian life, men and women cannot be differentiated"3, and, as a result, "at all levels but the strictly sexual one, the roles of both may be interchanged."4 LaCugna, as cited above, rejects feminist formulas which deny the relationality of the three Persons within the Trinity itself, but she also fails to recognize that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are not just Persons in some undifferentiated sense, but ordered and non-interchangeable relations. Hence, she tells us (twice) that in the Trinity there is neither hierarchy nor inequality.5

100b Why do so many theologians today fail to understand, much less properly apply to their analysis of human existence, the hierarchical character of the Trinity? The answer lies in a widespread misunderstanding about hierarchy. When LaCugna twice tells us that there is neither hierarchy nor inequality in the Trinity, she inadvertently reveals the problem we face, that hierarchy is thought to be indissociable from inequality, even among those who ought to know better. Thus, anyone who believes hierarchy and inequality to be indissociable faces an immediate and insurmountable problem regarding the Trinity. (Fs) (notabene)

101a On the one hand, the Persons of the Trinity are co-equal. The Church makes no bones about this. The Godhead consists of three Persons, each of whom fully possesses the one divine substance and is therefore equal to the other two Persons. On the other hand, the Trinity is a hierarchy or sacred order, as we have seen. If one believes that equality and hierarchy are incompatible, one is forced to make a choice here. Either the Persons of the Trinity are not equal, in which case God is not Trinity at all, or the Persons of the Trinity are not hierarchical, in which case there is no order of non-interchangeability to be found among them. Since denial of the Trinity, even in these days of dissent, is still unthinkable to a large number of egalitarian theologians, denial of the hierarchy of the Trinity becomes a necessity. But to deny the specific, ordered relations which make up the Trinity is every bit as much a denial of the Trinity as is the denial of the equality of the Persons, since the differences among the Persons are constituted precisely by their non-interchangeable relations and by nothing else. (Fs) (notabene)

101b Among the radical feminists, hierarchy and inequality are simply assumed to be synonymous, so much so that never is any need felt to justify the assumption. Commonplace, therefore, are statements such as those by feminist Letty Russell that a hierarchical order "is imaged by the pyramid of authority as domination",6 or by Religious Studies Professor Joann Wolski Conn that the tensions between liberal nuns in this country and the Vatican are rooted in "two distinctly different and opposing models of authority based on different ecclesiologies: one is hierarchical, the other is the discipleship of equals",7 or that by Sandra Schneiders that "no form of oppression can be finally overcome until that root [the principle of patriarchy] is cut, until hierarchy as such is delegitimated and replaced by a universal acceptance of the basic equality of all participants in creation."8 (Fs)