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Mary Daly and Paul Tillich

In her dissertation on The Problem of Speculative Theology, Daly argues in favour of speculative theology as an inductive method based on “positive knowledge of God through creatures” (Korte 2000:79). Daly opposes the view that the revelatory context of the Bible could be explained or proclaimed. Daly believed that one gains access to God if one reflects on one’s own sense of being and self-awareness. By reflecting on one’s own existence, one can grasp God’s Being (Daly 1968:41-47).

In her book Beyond God the Father, Daly devotes herself to developing a vision of a feminist spiritual revolution. Not only is she committed to going beyond Christianity, she also urges women to make an ethical choice to leave Christianity. She argues that:

“The Courage to leave springs from deep knowledge of the nucleus of nothingness which is at the core of the fallacious faith that freezes/fixes its victims.” (Daly 1985:xiii).

Although Daly admitted that many feminists had an impact on her theological and philosophical development, I will concentrate on the influences of Simone de Beauvoir and Paul Tillich. In my analysis of Daly, I observed that both de Beauvoir and Tillich played a crucial role in Daly’s formation as philosopher and theologian.

Tillich, in his Systematic Theology (1951), uses a method of correlation to correlate theological answers with existential questions. The analysis of existence, which develops existential questions, is a philosophical task and the correlation of powerful but privately impotent patriarchs found too threatening for coexistence and whom historians erase (Daly 1987:126).

Tillich believed that it is out of the human situation from which existential questions arise, and that it demonstrates that the symbols used in the Christian message are the answers to these questions (Tillich 1951:62). The existential question is man himself and it is the shock of nonbeing, which causes man to ask existential questions about himself and Christ; Christ is the manifestation of New Being and, through belief in Him, He reassures man that there is meaning in existence (Tillich 1951:62).

Daly is involved in both philosophical and theological tasks but in Beyond God the Father she moves beyond traditional symbols for answers. She explains her method as follows: First of all it obviously is not that of a “kerygmatic theology,” which supposes some unique and changeless revelation peculiar to Christianity or to any religion. Neither is my approach that of a disinterested observer who claims to have an “objective knowledge about” reality. Nor is it an attempt to correlate with the existing cultural situation certain “eternal truths” which are presumed to have been captured as adequately as possible in a fixed and limited set of symbols (Daly 1985:7).

Daly states that one of the false gods of theologians, philosophers and other academics is called “Method” and the “tyranny of methodolatry” hinders new discoveries and prevents people from asking the questions that have not been asked before (Daly 1985:11). “Worshippers of Method” use data effectively in a way that does not fit into the “Respectable Categories of Questions and Answers”. Daly goes on to say, “the god Method is a subordinate deity, serving Higher Powers” (Daly 1985:11). Although Daly denies using a method of correlation, Stenger points out that she uses it in two ways: one from a philosophical side, the other from a theological side. Stenger (1984:221) states: Philosophical side: There is an analysis of the present situation, and out of that requires that we ask several existential questions.

Daly deals only indirectly with the situation of humankind as a whole, but for women as having been, the present situation is a situation of alienation from the patriarchal word. Examples:

a) The existential question of transcendence is asked by women in their efforts to go beyond the present situation and the traditional patriarchal meanings,
b) The existential question of the source of courage and hope is asked by women in their efforts to face alienation,
c) Also, in the face of alienation, women are seeking New Being. Theological side: Daly not only shows that spiritual/religious questions are asked in the women’s revolution, but that they also discuss religious values and meanings which answer those questions.

In the “process of women becoming,” they experience the religious values and meanings of the power of being and New Being. Schneider remarks that Daly’s work is not without method and characterises Daly’s method as “movement” (Schneider 2000:59), whereas Daly prefers to call it “a method of liberation” that involves a “castration of language and images” that reflect and keep the structures of a sexist world alive (Daly 1985:8-9).

On Tillich’s method of correlations, Daly says: Although I find it less inadequate than the methods of other systematic theologians of this century, it clearly does not offer the radical critique of patriarchal religion that can only come from women, the primordial outsider (Daly 1985:200). Daly views Tillich’s ontological theology as potentially liberating in a radical sense but she argues that his speaking about God as ground and power of being would be difficult to use for the legitimating of any sort of oppression (Schneider 2000:59).

Daly also states that: It is becoming clear that if God-language is even implicitly compatible with oppressiveness, failing to make clear the relation between intellection and liberation, then it will either have to be developed in such a way that it becomes explicitly relevant to the problem of sexism or else dismissed (Daly 1985:21).

According to both Tillich and Daly, the methods of classical theology are insufficient to explain and to deal with evil within contemporary life. Both use philosophy, sociology and psychology to map out a direction towards a whole and healed existence (Schneider 2000:60). Daly, however, argues that her use and approach of philosophy 126 and theology differ from Tillich’s because he always stayed within the boundaries of patriarchal religion (Daly 1985:21).

Kairos (The Appointed Time or Right Time)

Tillich’s concept of kairos gives a new understanding of the meaning of history as a key to his Christological understanding of history (Tavard 1962:88). Kairos is God’s time, not what we, as humans understand as time. Kairos is a moment in time related to the ‘Unconditioned’ as the point in history in which time is disturbed by eternity (Tavard 1962:89). Kairos is in Tillich’s words: … a moment at which history has matured to the point of being able to receive the breakthrough of the manifestation of God (Tillich 1951:369). To Tillich, “kairos is a fulfilled and creative moment of time; a time of decision which involves the historical period in which knowledge is formed and which demands a decision in relation to the Unconditioned” (Stenger 1984:222).

Tavard (1962:89) says that Tillich refers to the New Testament concept to describe this moment as the ‘fulfilment of time’ in the words used by Jesus and John the Baptist when they announced the fulfilment of time with respect to the Kingdom of God, which is ‘at hand’ (Tillich 1951:369). Tavard states that Tillich believes that kairos is: … all-decisive time, a meaningful and qualitatively fulfilled moment in time, the manifestation of the divine dimension of the moment, when the new reality has come, the time of the New Being, and it is the divine time of God’s overcoming of all the ambiguities of being, life and history in Jesus as the Christ (Tavard 1962:89).

Although Daly does not use the term kairos in her reference to the historical situation she is living in, Stenger argues that one finds characteristics of Tillich’s idea of kairos in Daly’s description of the feminist situation (Stenger 1984:223). Daly states: The women’s revolution, insofar as it is true to its own essential dynamics, is ontological, spiritual revolution, pointing beyond the idolatries of sexist society and sparking creative action in and toward transcendence. The becoming of women implies universal human becoming. It has everything to do with the search for ultimate meaning and reality, which some would call God (Daly 1985:6).

As the women’s movement begins to have its effect upon the fabric of society, transforming it from patriarchy to something that never existed before – into a diarchal situation that is radically new – it can become the greatest single challenge to the major religions of the world. Western and Eastern Beliefs and values that have held sway from thousands of years will be questioned as never before. This revolution may well be also the greatest single hope for survival of spiritual consciousness on this planet (Daly 1985:13-14). Daly proposes that the emergence of the communal vocational self-awareness of women is a “creative political ontophany” (Daly 1985:34).

Stenger (1984:223) states:

“Daly’s views that the present situation is a time for something new, a creative moment in history, a time for the development and fulfilment of spiritual consciousness, a time in which the ultimate, the sacred, is becoming manifest. … Daly speaks of women as bearers of New Being. Her experience is an involved experience. The time for her, in short, a kairos. For Tillich, the Cross of Christ is the absolute criterion of all kairoi. Daly, however, rejects the male symbol of Christ as New Being and, therefore, rejects the idea of the manifestation of New Being in Christ as the central kairos”. (Stenger 1984:224).

Development of a Theological Norm

In the development of a theological norm, both Tillich and Daly consider past and present norms as well as the specific situations these occur within. Tillich engages critically with Catholic and Protestant norms in religion and with the current human situation of despair and meaninglessness. Tillich claims: Our ultimate concern is that which determines our being or not-being. Only those statements are theological which deal with their object so far as it can become a matter of being or not-being for us (Tillich 1951:62). Daly follows suit in critically engaging in present and past theologies, but relates them directly to the current situation of women. Daly rejects the patriarchal view of God, the patriarchal interpretation of the Fall and the male symbol for Jesus Christ. She rejects all and anything that she suspects of being compatible with patriarchal structures and values (Stenger 1984:224).

Daly admits that although Tillich tries to avoid hypostatisation of God – something she also does – he is not completely successful because he does not address the issue of sexual oppression (Daly 1985:20). Tillich’s discussion of God is detached, as is the rest of his theology (Daly 1985:21). Tillich’s theory is detached from the problem of relevance of God-language, to the struggle against demonic power structures, and Tillich, like other male theoreticians, developed a relatively non-sexist language for transcendence (Daly 1985:21). Daly tries to avoid the hypostatisation of God by stating:

“It is not necessary to anthropormorphize or to reify transcendence in order to relate to this personally. In fact, the process is demonic in some of its consequences. This dichotomizing-reifying-projecting syndrome has been characteristic of patriarchal consciousness … Why indeed must “God” be a noun? Why not a verb – the most active and dynamic of all? Hasn’t the naming of “God” as a noun been an act of murdering the dynamic Verb?” (Daly 1985:33).

Like Tillich, Daly recognises that the logical conclusion to the deconstruction of godtalk is the awareness that: … the truth of a religious symbol has nothing to do with the truth of the empirical assertion involved in it (Tillich 1951:240).

God as the Power of Being

Daly and Tillich held similar views on God in theism. Tillich moves from a God of theism to a God above theism (Tillich 1953:182-190) and Daly moves away from the 129 idea of a Supreme Being (Daly 1985:18). For Daly, a new understanding of God is important, as her understanding is that God is the supreme patriarch (Daly 1985:16- 22). To Daly, the Supreme Being is an entity that is distinctive from the world, who plans and controls the world and who keeps humans in a state of infantile subjection (Daly 1985:18). Both Tillich and Daly view theological theism as bad theology (Stenger 1984:226).

To Tillich, theological theism presents an argument for the existence of God and presents a doctrine of God as a reality independent of human beings. This bad theology, according to Tillich, makes God an object but also the subject. This means that a person becomes a mere object (Tillich 1953:184-185). Tillich states:

“He deprives me of my subjectivity because he is all-powerful and all-knowing. I revolt and try to make him into an object, but the revolt fails and becomes desperate. God appears as the invincible tyrant, the being in contrast with whom all other beings are without freedom and subjectivity. He is equated with the recent tyrants who with the help of terror try to transform everything into a mere object, a thing among things, a cog in the machine they control”. (Tillich 1953:184).

Daly’s argument resembles that of Tillich’s. Daly states: The widespread conception of the Supreme Being as an entity distinct from this world but controlling it according to plan and keeping human beings in a state of infantile subjection has been a not too subtle mask of the divine patriarch (Daly 1985:18). Daly believes that the women’s movement has to put an end to the oppressive elements within theism. The women’s movement, therefore, has to leave God behind (Daly 1985:18). Both Tillich and Daly reject God as the Supreme Being and as one who reduces His subjects to powerless objects (Stenger 1984:226).

Tillich sees God as the power of being. He also believes that it is courage that allows humans to resolve their own anxieties (Stenger 1984:226). Both Tillich and Daly move beyond the concept of a patriarchal Being to the ideal of God as the power of being (Stenger 1984:226).Daly sees God as the power of being and as the root of the experience of transcendence, courage, and hope. These experiences of transcendence, courage, and hope, however, lie in women’s experiences and their alienation from the androcentric world (Daly 1985:28, 32).

The dynamic character of God as the power of being finds expression in the idea of being-itself eternally overcoming nonbeing (Tillich 1953:180-181). To Daly, God should become the “dynamic Verb and not a static word”. Tillich’s treatment of God as power of being is more universal than Daly’s, as her idea of power of being is limited to women’s experiences (Stenger 1984:226).

Courage

Courage, and more specifically, existential courage, is another concept that Daly and Tillich share. Daly acknowledges that she was inspired by Tillich’s book, The Courage to Be (1952) (Daly 1993:136).

In her article, The Courage to See (1971b:1109-1110), Daly took Tillich’s views on existential courage into another context: the omnipresent sexual caste system of patriarchy. She did this to transform the concept of existential courage and to apply it to the struggle against the sexual hierarchy that exists in theology and culture (Daly 1993:136). Tillich sees courage as being grounded in the power of being-itself and that it has a religious basis. He believes that courage enables people to face the threats of nonbeing and he goes on to say that courage is in relation to the existential anxieties of non-being in the forms of death, emptiness, meaninglessness and guilt (Tillich 1953:155).

Tillich states:

“Few concepts are so useful for the analysis of the human situation. Courage is an ethical reality, but it is rooted in the whole breadth of human existence and ultimately in the structure of being itself “(Tillich 1953:1).

Daly defines courage as the ability to confront the experience of nothingness (Daly 1985:23). Using Tillich’s understanding of courage, Daly believes, however, that although Tillich analyses courage in universalist humanist categories his views are inadequate because he does not link these to the women’s struggle against  structured patriarchy. (Daly 1985:23).

Daly goes on to define courage as those women who have become the bearers of existential courage in society. When women show existential courage, they will be able to liberate themselves from the patriarchal structures of the world and to develop new religious meaning free from sexism (Daly 1985:23-24). The core and basic thesis of Daly’s philosophy in Beyond God the Father is the realisation that the women’s revolution is about the participation in Be-ing as an ontological movement (Daly 1993:159).