Contesting the feminist critique of the dangers of Christianity's self-giving ethics, this book advances a contemporary feminist christology engaging the strength of self-giving power. Feminist theologians have established that the self-giving doctrines can disempower women and other oppressed persons, teaching passivity and evasion of one's own self-development. Christ's kenosis, or self-emptying on the cross offers a central example of sacrifice for others to the detriment of one's own self-care. And yet, in contrast to previous feminist theologies, this book argues for the power available in self-giving. This feminist christology affirms that we come into ourselves through our own kenosis. Drawing on diverse sources, including traditional voices like Luther or Balthasar, contemporary feminist theologians such as Rosemary Radford Ruether or Marcella Althaus-Reid, and studies of abuse survivors, this book explores passionate self-giving as a power for divine and human revelation, a power for resistance of abuse, and a power for the continued anointing of Christic presence in a postmodern context.
Self-giving engages a force that differs from both the 'power in mutual relation' common to feminist theology and the 'power over' of patriarchal thought. Christic self-giving conveys a power for: for God's thriving in the world, and for our own.