ABSTRACT
Carol Christ, in what may be one of the first self-conscious steps towards developing
a systematic thealogy, has affirmed that ‘the binary oppositions of traditional
theology, including transcendence-immanence, theism-pantheism, and monotheism-
polytheism, do not accurately describe the meaning of the Goddess’.1 Her suggestion
is that thealogy must develop alternative ways of thinking, alternative conceptual
tools, and alternative methodologies to those that have been deployed by traditional,
patriarchal theology. And, given that thealogy is an emergent discourse, arising
primarily in a grass-roots fashion from a diverse array of non-traditional sources,
one may reasonably argue that different conceptual, discursive and methodological
approaches are inevitable. One need only reflect upon the contortions that modern
theology is going through as it encounters critical theory, deconstruction, and the
various challenges of globalization, postmodernization, and the cultural logic of
late capitalism, to conclude that aporias, paradigm-shifts and ruptures in human
reflection on the sacred are probably inescapable. Thealogy may indeed need to be
different; particularly in so far as it is arguably premised upon a feminist opposition
to the perceived procedural and substantive errors of patriarchal theologies in the
past. The question then arises: to what degree is this possible?
