Ruether examines the foundational paradigm of Christian thought in regard to gender and redemption. By the fourth century, Ruether argues, the dominant paradigm defined women as created subordinate by nature to men. This subordination was to be reinforced due to punishment for sin. By contrast, belief in original equality was spiritualized. It referred to a future in heaven beyond gender and sexuality. It was in the Quaker tradition, she shows, that original equality was reclaimed for this worldly life, to be developed further in nineteenth-century feminist theology. Her work thus discloses the roots of today's Euroamerican and Third World feminist theologies. Romsemary Radford Ruether is Georgia Harkness Professor of Theology at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, Illinois.
