source

Daly’s response to this question is drawn from Tillich. Women must find the courage to be. This entails a new fall, a true fall, one not into sin, but rather out of the degrading patriarchal system and into the background. Only by doing so may they encounter New Being, which is their true Being and their Old Being, obscured by patriarchal myths. It is a free-fall into both an outer and an innerspace which is not defined by the god-fathers’ lies. Women themselves must become the bearers of New Being; they themselves must become the incarnation of God.

Seen in this way, the awakening of women to our human potentiality through creative action would be envisaged as having the potentiality to bring about a manifestation of God which would be the second appearance of God incarnate, fulfilling the latent promise in the original revelation that male and female are made to the image of God (Daly 1985[1973], 73).

Only by taking a leap of faith into the seemingly anomic void may women dis-cover their human potentiality. To do so is to reclaim their primordial power, their gynergy, and to begin the process of re-membering and of spinning new, gynocentric and biophilic realities. New Being is the dynamic and creative power women discover in themselves, in their true humanity unveiled of patriarchal myth. It is the healing power which re-members the self divided against itself. It is manifest wheresoever women dare to speak, to reclaim their human dignity and right to name, which is, to give meaning. It is a denial of the myths that meaning-making is the Adamic task and that tasting the fruit of the tree of knowledge is a sin. New Being is present when women curse the sins of the fathers and laugh at their absurdity.

In affirming the centrality of the concepts of New Being and the courage to be, Daly is clearly affirming the partial revelation of Tillich’s theological system. Yet Tillich himself was firmly entrenched in the patriarchal system, a fact clearly attested by his penchant for sadist pornography (Daly 1990[1978], 94-95). Tillich’s vision of the savior must be castrated for it to be truly salvific. Only by going beyond a conception of “God the Father” may women find true wholeness and salvation in this life. Only by realizing in their lives God the Verb will women participate in Be-ing. God is the intransitive Verb, the creative and meaning-full force presently incarnate in women’s struggle for liberation. As intransitive Verb, God is not objectifying, but rather dynamic. God summons women not to patient suffering in expectation of riches to come, but empowers women in their humanity to make this world rich. It is both a summons and power unto creation, celebration and cerebration.