Redeeming Gender

by Adrian Thatcher

Redeeming Gender argues that the problems about sexuality which continue to sap the churches' energies are really about gender. The dominant understanding of women's bodies in the Christian West has been that they are inferior versions of the superior male body. This 'one-sex model' of the human body was replaced during the Enlightenment with a model of two opposite sexes. However, both models are inadequate for a theological or a secular understanding of the sexed body. In this innovative work, Adrian Thatcher envisages relations between women and men no longer blighted by long-term patriarchy, androcentrism and sexism in church and world, but redeemed from these structural sins by the grace of Jesus Christ.

Dissected into two parts, Part One explains the legacy of both the one-sex and two-sex theories. It uncovers the one-sex theory and its assumptions, and indicates its presence in early Christian thought. It then describes what happened in our social, intellectual and theological history, which leaves us thinking that there are two sexes. In Part Two, Thatcher contributes to an emerging theology of gender in which women and men are fully and equally valued, and in which sexual difference (insofar as it exists at all), is capable of transformation into joyful communion, reflecting the very life of God the Holy Trinity. He exposes the reliance of much Church and theological teaching about sex and gender either on biblical proof texts or upon the language and nomenclature of late modernity, rather than upon considerations of Theology and Christology. Thatcher also indicates how Theology and Christology, in the area of gender, envisions the redemption of human relationships.

234 pages, Hardcover

Published September 9, 2016

Reviews

[Justin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Possibly the best theology book on gender that I've read, and definitely the most eye-opening and stimulating. Examines in detail and thoroughly refutes the one-sex, two unequal sexes and two equal sexes frameworks (based on Laqueur) as viable Christian ones, suggesting an alternative that defines the essence of one humankind (not 'malekind' or 'femalekind'; Thatcher disdains the degree to which society – both Christian and secular – obsessively defines everything in relation to two distinct sexes) as the image of God found in the incarnate Christ, and by considering a Trinitarian ontology (of three Persons in Relations) to redeem gender relations. It also unequivocally and utterly bashes the patriarchy in the process, which is always a win.

[Andy Fuqua · Rating 1 out of 5]

If you want to do Christian theology, you cannot chuck the primary source of Christian theology because you want to fit in with modern progressive ideals. It’s impossible to accurately discuss Christian theology without acknowledging the Bible’s teaching. Like it or not, theology minus the Bible isn’t “Christian” theology, even if the theologian claims to be a Christian. Thatcher doesn’t like what the Bible says, so he invents reasons to cherry-pick what he wants from Scripture and jettison the rest. But that’s poor methodology. It’s not theology, it’s ideology.

[Kayla · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great book for opening up discussion about the complexities of thought about sexuality in Church history (& otherwise)....less great in other respects. Thatcher attempts to scrap many difficult texts of Scripture under the conditions of historical contamination, and makes some funky moves with his trajectory hypothesis (claiming that in our present times, we have a more refined ability to discern the mind of Christ).