Male & Female Theology

Modern theology should be labeled FOR MEN ONLY, according to one woman who has made a study of the subject. In the current issue of the quarterly Journal of Religion, Valerie Saiving Goldstein, 39, instructor in religion at Hobart and William Smith colleges in Geneva, N.Y., lodges a feminine complaint against contemporary theologians: they are making the mistake of assuming that a thinking man's theology is equally good for a thinking woman.

Feminine Sin. Teacher Goldstein was trained, at Bates College and the University of Chicago, in psychology as well as in theology, plans to teach a course in the fall on religion and psychology. In her argument, she bases her criticism of contemporary theology in large part on psychological observations. Her starting point: little girls learn that they will grow up--just by waiting--to be women. Boys, on the other hand, learn that to be men they must do something about it. Mere waiting is not enough; to be a man, a boy must prove himself and go on proving himself. Even the process of reproduction casts women in a relatively passive role, while it is something the male must make happen or else face failure. "The man's sense of his own masculinity," writes Author Goldstein, "is throughout characterized by uncertainty, challenge, and the feeling that he must again and again prove himself a man." The result, as she sees it: men are more anxious than women.

This sociological-psychological fact, thinks Teacher Goldstein, a nondenominational Protestant, has profound theological results. Insecure and anxious like most men, theologians (there has never been a woman theologian of note) tend to equate the restless self-concern that results from this state with sin, and to extol the opposite (feminine) qualities of quiet, self-surrendering passivity. Such theologians as Paul Tillich, Reinhold Niebuhr, Sweden's Anders Nygren and Israel's Martin Buber see man as estranged from himself and from God and filled with anxiety because of his estrangement; that anxiety, in their view, results in sins of "pride, will-to-power, exploitation, self-assertiveness, and the treatment of others as objects rather than persons ... It is clear that such an analysis of man's dilemma was profoundly responsive and relevant to the concrete facts of modern man's existence."

But not necessarily woman's. Experiencing more security and less anxiety than men, women find it easier "to enter into loving relationships in which self-concern is at a minimum." Instead of masculine pride and will to power, women have their own "specifically feminine forms of sin ... outgrowths of the basic feminine character structure" and "suggested by such items as triviality, distractibility, and diffuseness; lack of an organizing center or focus; dependence on others for one's own self-definition; tolerance at the expense of standards of excellence; inability to respect the boundaries of privacy; sentimentality, gossipy sociability, and mistrust of reason --in short, underdevelopment or negation of self."

Feminine Society. While "the specifically feminine dilemma is, in fact, precisely the opposite of the masculine," says Teacher Goldstein, and while women are beginning for the first time in history to find the time and education to make their way toward the more active, less biological levels of life, they are being told by masculine theologians that the desire for more self-awareness and more power in the affairs of the world is sinful. "If such a woman believes the theologians, she will try to strangle those impulses in herself. She will believe that, having chosen marriage and children and thus being face to face with the needs of her family for love, refreshment and forgiveness, she has no right to ask anything for herself but must submit without qualification to the strictly feminine role."

The problem, says Teacher Goldstein, is important for men as well as women, because society as a whole is growing more and more feminine. If the 19th century U.S. was a masculine society of private enterprisers and empire builders --egotists to whom opportunism and ornery behavior were no sin--the modern U.S. rates teamwork and sociability high virtues. It is a world in which the in dividual is expected to play a relatively more passive role within the group.

Dr. Goldstein feels that theologians are not taking sufficient account of this sociological fact, that they are still attacking an oldfashioned, masculine form of sin, instead of redefining their "categories of sin and redemption" to meet the new situation. "For a feminine society will have its own special potentialities for good and evil, to which a theology based solely on masculine experience may well be irrelevant." She offers no specific suggestions for a female theology of the future, but perhaps what lies ahead is a theology of enlightened self-esteem emphasizing the final words of Christ's commandment: "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."

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