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In a longer article available online (above link), Denise Ackerman discusses Ruether’s criticism of the way the myth of the Fall in Genesis 3 has been used to construct a worldview where the female gender is oppressed and suffers injustice.

An example of how Rosemary Ruether sets about critiquing and reconstructing Christian theology is found in her chapter entitled ‘Anthropology: Humanity as male and female’. The question for feminist theology is “… how … theological dualism of imago dei/fallen Adam connects with sexual duality, or humanity as male and female.”12 Deeply rooted in Christian faith is the “…affirmation of the equivalence of maleness and femaleness in the image of God. This has never been denied, but is has tended to become obscured by a second tendency to correlate femaleness with the lower part of human nature in a hierarchal scheme of mind over body, reason over passions.”13 Patriarchal anthropology has come perilously close to seeing women as the cause of sin in the world. From ancient to modern times, through the theology of Augustine, Aquinas, Luther and Barth, run the threads of patriarchal thinking. Augustine, the classical source of such views on women, believed that the male alone possessed the image of God normatively.

Aquinas accepted a biological theory of women’s inferiority and adopted the Aristotelian definition of woman as a ‘misbegotten male’.14 Though the Reformation brought about some changes, patriarchal thinking continued to dominate Christian theology. “Women through the Fall and in punishment for the Fall lost her original equality and became inferior in mind and body. She is now, within fallen history, subjected to the male as her superior. This subjugation is not a sin against her, but her punishment for her sin. It is an expression of divine justice”, writes Ruether.15 Barth subscribed to an order of creation.

“God is sovereign over his Creation. The covenant of nature has not been annulled but reestablished in the covenant of grace by which Christ as head rules his people as obedient servants. Male and female, then, are necessarily ordered in a relation of those who lead and those who follow. Men and women should accept their own place in this order, the man humbly and the woman willingly.” (Ruether 1983:98)

Such, according to patriarchal anthropology, is the divinely ordered scheme of things. Ruether then proceeds to identify alternative traditions in more egalitarian anthropologies including eschatological feminism, liberal feminism, romantic feminism, etc. These are also subjected to critical scrutiny.

Ruether knows that an egalitarian and integrated theological anthropology (view of humankind) has to overcome the divisions caused by dualistic world-views. This requires the integration of the private and public spheres in new relationships that are able to function in a new integrated social order. Such an order has to be just and, for Christians, the model for redeemed humanity is Jesus Christ. This means that the question of anthropology leads us theologically to the problem of Christology (teachings on the role and person of Christ). Has traditional Christology in fact been redemptive for women or has it become a further tool for reinforcing female subjugation? These thoughts, and these questions may sound like old hat to the younger feminist theologians of today. Yet I have only to listen to a radio call-in programme for a short while to know that patriarchal anthropology, both socially and in the religious sphere, is alive and well in our context.