Imaginative Theology: A Strategy of Subversion

Abstract

Imaginative Theology:A Strategy of Subversion Philip Sheldrake (bio) Barbara Newman has written a complex, highly original and stimulating book. In broad terms it studies the meaning, role and implications of "goddesses" or female representations of the sacred in medieval religious literature. As an interdisciplinary study, the book may be approached from several different perspectives—most obviously it can be appreciated as a work of medieval religious history, as a study of medieval European literature or, more broadly, as a nuanced and scholarly contribution to women's studies. However, Newman begins to open up broader and provocative questions for contemporary theology (and the role of spirituality in relation to it) by insisting that these representations and the literary genres that employed them should be viewed as specifically theological. Attempts to "retrieve" feminine images for God in Christian, especially medieval, spiritual literature are obviously not new and already have a great deal of contemporary currency—for example, since the re-emergence of Julian of Norwich's Showings or Revelations and the popularization of the spirituality of the Beguines.However, Newman's focus is quite precise and uncovers an under-rated and indeed largely forgotten class of feminine religious representations. These are "the allegorical goddesses" as she calls them that, alongside the saints and the angels, were allowed a place close to God but within essentially monotheistic parameters. Such "goddesses" were numerous and included such figures as Lady Wisdom, Ecclesia, Dame Nature, Love and Lady Poverty (as in the legends of St Francis). The use of the word "goddesses" is provocative and some readers will take issue with this designation. Newman makes a vital distinction between reading the goddesses as in some way female representations of the divine (which they were) and as representations of women (which they were not). This form of representation is neither feminist theology nor Jungian psychology before its time but something quite distinctive. On the other hand, the production of these allegorical figures cannot simply be reduced to the strange habit (in modern eyes) of personifying abstract values and universal virtues. Even the question whether medieval writers "believed in" their goddesses or whether such figures were understood to be "real" rather than fictions cannot be answered in a straightforward way. [End Page 211] At the risk of over-simplifying Newman's extended and careful argument, we may risk the following brief comments. The female representations are imaginative exercises. They are designated "goddesses" because they function in a specifically religious way as a medium for relating to God (or reflecting about God's attributes and relationship to the human condition). Yet these representations do not directly impinge on questions of doctrine. Paradoxically, only one Son of God was permissible within orthodox Trinitarian theology. Yet, medieval writers could posit any number of allegorical "daughters." This is because the roles of the "goddesses" were not as instruments of theological speculation let alone definition. While the goddesses in some sense implied a likeness to God, they essentially acted more broadly as mediations between God and the cosmos and representations of God's characteristics to humankind. Crucially, the personification of divine attributes or, as Newman puts it (41) "[giving] the divine attributes body and voice," made them accessible not merely to the intellectual faculty but also to human imagination. The accessibility of the divine to the imagination brings us to one of the most interesting aspects of Newman's book that moves us beyond purely medieval studies and even beyond another useful tool for studying an aspect of the history of Christian spirituality. The crucial foundation is that the medieval use of allegory is not simply a literary device but is properly theological. In Chapter 7, Newman promotes the notion of "imaginative theology" as an additional category to be placed alongside the classic four-fold framework for interpreting medieval theology—monastic, scholastic, pastoral and mystical—supplemented by the recent concept of vernacular theology (in the mother tongue, by means of a wide range of literary genres and available to laypeople, especially to women). Needless to say, to some degree all these categories overlap and "imaginative theology" blends particularly with the vernacular and the mystical. I suggest that Newman's new category expands...