Sexual Difference, Gender, and Agency in Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics

(Paperback)

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This volume is a critical and constructive analysis of the sexually differentiated self in Karl Barths Church Dogmatic. It secures in his Christocentric pattern of human agency an untapped resource for unsettling and reimagining the heteropatriarchal structure of human fellowship at the heart of his theological anthropology. Moving through Barths doctrines of revelation, creation, theological anthropology, and special ethics, Faye Bodley-Dangelo locates the human agent in his broader project aimed at re-habilitating the subject of modern protestant theology. She argues the human actor comes into view as the recipient of Christs redemptive activity, which redirects it out of self-aggrandizing isolation and into relationships of dependency, responsiveness, and ethical responsibility to multiple sites of divine and creaturely alterity. The book debates that Barths model of human agency cannot on its own terms sustain his version of female subordination nor his repudiation of same-sex relationships. Rather, it contains ethically-oriented, critical and reflective mechanisms that resist the sexist heterosexist dimension of his theological anthropology and lend themselves to an anti-essentialist performative account of gender.

Reviews

[D]eeply researched, well-argued, and poignantly relevant ... [I]mportant not only for Barth studies, but for the ongoing conversations regarding the significance of otherness, difference, and agency in theological anthropology. Anyone seeking to understand the issues and assets within Barths own account, interested in engagement with existing secondary literature, and looking for a compelling correction to and relevant re-reading of Barths Christological anthropology need look no further than Bodley-Dangelos work. * Center for Barth Studies *
Sexual Difference is a gift to Barth scholarship and to contemporary theological ethics and deserves a careful read ... in 181 deftly economical pages, Bodley-Dangelo demonstrates the sort of perspicacity one would want to see brought to bear on other parts of the Church Dogmatics as well ... Constructively engaging Barth on his own terms, Bodley-Dangelo makes space for the possibility of creative performances of sexual difference that are more in keeping with the concrete christological pattern of human agency he himself wishes to uphold. * International Journal of Systematic Theology *
This is by far one of the most sophisticated and nuanced analyses of Barth on Gender and Sexuality we have in the English language. Dr. Bodley-Dangelos powerful intervention might finally pull Barth Studies out of the quagmire of obsessive defense or impatient dismissal of Barths Theological Anthropology. * Willie James Jennings, Yale Divinity School, USA *
Of the many excellent studies of Barth on gender and sexual difference this one stands out as the best . Leading us through the complexities and ambiguities of Barth's position, Bodley-Dangelo offers a compelling account of what Barth actually said along with convincing reconstructions of what he might have said but regrettably did not. I recommend it enthusiastically for anyone who is interested in the theology of gender or the theology of Barth. * Gerald McKenny, Walter Professor of Theology, University of Notre Dame, USA *
Bodley-Dangelos searingly acute analysis reveals the breadth and depth of the problems in Karl Barths theology with respect to sex, gender, and sexuality, as well as pointing a way beyond them. This book is a crucial new reference point for any adequate theological reception of Barths thought. * David Clough, Professor of Theological Ethics, University of Chester, UK *
Faye Bodley-Dangelo has tackled afresh the contentious subject of Barth's attitudes to women and gender in the Church Dogmatics, and given the subject a completely new hermeneutical and critical twist by a focus on Barth's christological account of human agency. This is a book of great sophistication, clarity and insight, and its lessons will need to be absorbed not only by Barth scholars but by all theologians who work on contemporary issues of gender and the Christian tradition. * Sarah Coakley, University of Cambridge, UK, and Australian Catholic University, Australia *
By exploring Barths Dogmatics through the lens of human agency rather than the ordering of central relationships, Bodley-Dangelo locates resources within Barths theology that resist and challenge his sexist and heterosexist matrix. This close reading of Barths construal of agency in his christocentric theological anthropology is a vital and compelling contribution to Barth scholarship, that neither overlooks nor overdetermines the gender trouble in Barths theology. * Brandy Renee Daniels, University of Virginia, USA *

Author Bio

Faye Bodley-Dangelo is Managing Editor at Harvard Theological Review, USA.